Edward McWilliam Patterson, FRSE (30 July 1926 – 5 April 2013) was an English mathematician.
[1] He was born in Whitby, North Yorkshire, the son of parents from Northern Ireland, and educated at the local Lady Lumley's school and Leeds University, where he graduated B.Sc in mathematics and was awarded a Ph.D. on the subject of differential geometry.
From 1959 to 1951 he was a demonstrator at Sheffield University before moving to St Andrews in to take up a post as lecturer for five years.
His mathematical work was originally geometry-based, and he published a textbook entitled Topology in 1956.
He had married twice: firstly Joan Maddick, with whom he had a daughter, Christine and secondly, after her death, Elizabeth Hunter.