James Morton Hyslop

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James Morton Hyslop (1908–1984) was a Scottish mathematician and educationalist who spent much of his career in Africa. He founded the Royal College of Nairobi in 1961 and later held university leadership roles in South Africa and Kenya.

Life
He was born in Dumbarton on 12 September 1908, the son of William Hyslop. He went to Glasgow High School, then studied at Glasgow University (MA) and Cambridge University (BA and PhD). His 1925 doctoral work was on The Theory of Infinite Bilinear Forms and of Linear Integral Equations, supervised by Ernest William Hobson. He returned to Glasgow to lecture in Mathematics and earned a Doctor of Science in 1939. During World War II he served in the Royal Air Force Bomber Command, becoming a Pilot Officer in September 1941. In 1947 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. That year he became a professor at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, a position he held until 1960. He then moved to Nairobi, where he helped turn the Technical College of Nairobi into the Royal College of Nairobi, serving as Principal until 1963; this institution later became the University of Nairobi. In 1963 he returned to South Africa as Vice Chancellor of Rhodes University in Grahamstown. Glasgow University awarded him a third doctorate (LLD) in 1967, and Rhodes University a fourth (LLD) in 1976. He died in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, on 18 May 1984.

Publications
- Infinite Series (1942; later editions)
- Real Variable (1960)

Family
In 1935 he married Helen Margaret Hyslop.