The Seggie Brown Bequest

The William Gordon Seggie Brown Memorial bequest comprises a research fellowship and student bursary which is awarded for outstanding ability in mathematics.

William Gordon (Seggie) Brown was a young man with a remarkable talent for mathematics and physics. He was killed in 1916, aged 21, at Beaumont Hamel, France, during the First World War. Before he fell, he had shown a deep and profound enthusiasm for mathematics and physics, publishing articles in the Philosophical Magazine and in the Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. As a boy, Seggie Brown excelled as a pupil of George Watson's College.

To commemorate his life and work, Seggie Brown's family endowed the University of Edinburgh with the William Gordon Seggie Brown Memorial. Through the Seggie Brown Fellowship and Seggie Brown Bursary, this prestigious and long-running memorial encourages the study and research of Mathematics and Mathematical Physics at the University of Edinburgh.

 

The Bequest

The Seggie Brown Fellowship. This is a post-doctoral fellowship in Mathematics and Mathematical Physics which may be held for 3 years.

The Seggie Brown Bursary. This is awarded to a pupil of George Watson's College who is proceeding to study mathematics or physics at the University of Edinburgh. It is awarded for outstanding ability in mathematics. The bursary consists of a gold medal and an annual bursary.

Photograph of Seggie Brown
Picture credit: Photo courtesy of the family of Seggie Brown and George Watson's College.

The work of Seggie Brown

Seggie Brown's article, On the Faraday-Tube Theory of Electro-Magnetism, was published posthumously, in 1922, in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh:

 

The article was accompanied by an extended intellectual biography:

Seggie Brown biography (736.72 KB / PDF)

 

Both documents are provided courtesy of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Current Seggie Brown Fellows

We currently have two Seggie Brown Fellows.

Past Seggie Brown Fellows

The first Seggie Brown Fellow, Guyan Robertson, joined our School in October 1974.

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