George McRae:  

George McRae Professor of Mathematical Sciences, The University of Montana – Missoula, Alumnus of The University of Montana – BA (Mathematics): 1960; MA (Mathematics): 1961. A Montana native, I was born in Jordan, MT, and grew up at the family ranch on the Big Dry 25 miles east of Jordan. The cattle, horse and sheep ranch was homesteaded by my Scottish immigrant parents and today it is still in the family. Even though my parents had little formal education and they both died early in my life, they instilled in their eight children the strong Scottish tradition of education. Myself and my siblings all started our education in the one room Van Norman schoolhouse. For the upper grades and high school the younger ones followed a couple older brothers to Missoula and the University of Montana for more education. At The University of Montana I completed the bachelors (1960) and masters (1961) degrees in mathematics (under Prof. Joe Hashisaki). In that post "Sputnik" era, I stayed on at the University to teach mathematics for a year before going to the University of Washington for my Ph.D. in mathematics (1967). The next few years I was on the mathematics faculty at the University of Illinois (Urbana – Champaign). In the summer of 1970 I returned "home" with my young family (wife: Neva, daughter: Loreen and son: Scott), for a long career as a faculty membe...Expand for more