Robert Alexander Rankin FRSE FRSAMD (27 October 1915 – 27 January 2001) was a Scottish mathematician who worked in analytic number theory.
His father took the name Oliver Shaw Rankin on marriage and became Professor of Old Testament Language, Literature and Theology in the University of Edinburgh.
[1] Rankin was elected a Fellow of Clare College in 1939, but his career was interrupted by the Second World War, during which he worked first for the Ministry of Supply then on rocketry research at Fort Halstead.
In 1945 he returned to Cambridge as an assistant lecturer, and then moved to the University of Birmingham in 1951 as Mason professor of mathematics.
In his review, Marvin Knopp wrote: In 1987 Rankin received the Senior Whitehead Prize from the London Mathematical Society.