John David Philip Meldrum, 1940–2018

Abstract

John David Philip Meldrum was born in Rabat, Morocco, on 18 July 1940 and died in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 9 August 2018 after a battle with the Parkinson disease. His parents were Philip Meldrum, an Anglican clergyman, and Ruth Meldrum, née Abadia, a former nurse. John Meldrum received his PhD in 1966 under the supervision of Derek Roy Taunt (a student of Philip Hall), who had worked as a code breaker at Bletchley Park during World War II. John's dissertation had the title ‘Central Series in Wreath Products’. Almost all of his remaining research related to group theory, either generalizations to semigroups or the study of self-maps on groups, that is near-rings.