Dr. McShane But now I want to return to those first days of my introduction to graduate level mathematics, specifically to one course with the intimidating title, “Functions of a Real Variable”. The lecturer was Dr. E. J. McShane. He was the acting head of the department, in the absence of the permanent head who was on a sabbatical. I think that I may have made a slight impression on him by sitting on the front row in class, looking at him as he lectured, and attempting, with some success, to explain a theorem that he had assigned for study. But he definitely made an impression on me. He had enrolled all of the new graduate math students in this class. Apparently he wanted to give us a proper introduction to abstract mathematics, because he spent the first six weeks of the course teaching us logic in considerable depth – far beyond the basic logic of my high school course in Euclidean geometry. This logic utilized an extensive system of symbols that was appropria...
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