SQU prof gets Edinburgh honour
Ibrahim A. El Tayeb was elected Corresponding (Foreign) Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. The prestigious appointment is a reward for the high quality of his research
MUSCAT: Prof Ibrahim A. El Tayeb, Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the College of Science at Sultan Qaboos University (SQU), was elected Corresponding (For- eign) Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society of Edinburgh.
This is a prestigious appointment, which is based primarily on the high quality of research he has conducted. Prof Eltayeb was invited to the induction ceremony of the new Fellows earlier at the headquarters of the Society in Edinburgh, where he was inducted by the President of the Society, Sir John Peebles Arbuthnott, along with three other Corresponding Fellows.
Election to the Royal Society of Edinburgh is possible only if the candidate is nominated by three Fellows of the Society and the application has then to go through four levels of assessment before the names are put to the ballot by all the Fellows of the Society.
Seniority
In particular, the election of Corresponding Fellows, from among those who are not domiciled in the British isles, is considered more difficult as they are usually senior to the normal Fellows. The Society has 1,570 Fellows and only 65 Corresponding Fellows.
The Royal Society of Edinburgh is based in Scotland and operates on a wholly independent and nonpolitical basis. It was established by a Royal Decree in 1783. The Fellowship includes people from a wide range of disciplines — science , technology, arts, humanities, social science, business and public service. Such a variety of expertise makes the Society unique in the United Kingdom.
Prof Ibrahim was born in a small village on the banks of river Nile, about 500km north of Khartoum, Sudan, and was educated in government schools in Sudan.
He was awarded a scholarship to study mathematics in the United Kingdom and graduated from the University of London in August 1968. He proceeded to do his PhD at the University of Newcastleupon-Tyne and returned to Sudan to take up the post of lecturer in mathematics at the University of Khartoum in April 1972.
He was subsequently promoted to the post of senior lecturer, reader and then to professor in the year 1980. He joined Sultan Qaboos University as a professor in August 1986. During his tenure at SQU, he was elected Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society of London in 1988 and was awarded the mathematics prize of the Organization of Islamic Countries in 2007, in addition to a number of other recognitions.