Robert MacPherson

(b Forfarshire [now Tayside], 1811; d Rome, 17 Nov 1872). Scottish photographer and painter, active in Italy. He studied medicine at Edinburgh from 1831 to 1835 before deciding to become a painter. In 1840 he settled in Rome, where he belonged to the literary and artistic expatriate community. Among his acquaintances were the writers Robert and Elizabeth Browning and the art historian Anna Bronwell Jameson, whose niece, Gerardine Bate, he married in 1849. Macpherson made a living as a landscape painter and supplemented his income by buying and selling paintings. His most notable act of connoisseurship was the identification and acquisition of the Entombment of Michelangelo, now in the National Gallery, London.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

Macpherson, Robert ( c.1815-1872), Scottish photographer, active in Rome, where he established himself c. 1841 as a painter and art dealer. Introduced to the ‘new art’ of photography in 1851, he subsequently favoured Dr J. M. Taupenot's collodio-albumen process which, despite long exposures, best suited his practical and aesthetic needs.

Macpherson's self-designation as an artist-photographer is justified by his architectural and landscape studies. Through choice of viewpoint and manipulation of contrast, he exploited the interplay between light and shade to produce strong graphic images. Despite commercial constraints, his architectural photographs went beyond mere description to evoke the grandeur of imperial Rome. By 1858, with Tommaso Cuccioni (1813-64) and James Anderson (1813-77), Macpherson was one of Rome's leading photographers, and was the first to photograph the Vatican interior, recording many of its sculptures. He maintained strong links with the Photographic Society of Scotland and the Architectural Photographic Association. Unlike his successful rival Anderson, however, he failed to meet the growing demand for popular topographical views, and his business declined during the 1860s.

— Siobhan Davis

Bibliography

• Dewitz, B. v., Siegert, D., Schuller-Procopovici, K., (eds.), Italien sehen und sterben: Photographien der Zeit des Risorgimento (1845- 1870) (1994)

For the BMX racer, see Robert MacPherson (BMX racer).

Robert MacPherson, 2008

Robert MacPherson (born May 25, 1944, Lakewood, Ohio) is an American mathematician at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He is best known for the invention of intersection homology with Mark Goresky, whose thesis he directed at Brown University. MacPherson previously taught at Brown University, the University of Paris, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1983 he gave a plenary address at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Warsaw.

Educated at Swarthmore College and Harvard University, MacPherson received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1970. His thesis, written under the direction of Raoul Bott, was entitled Singularities of Maps and Characteristic Classes. Among his many Ph.D students are Kari Vilonen and Mark Goresky.

In 1992 MacPherson was awarded the National Academy of Sciences Award in Mathematis. In 2002 he and Goresky were awarded the Leroy P. Steele Prize by the American Mathematical Society, in 2009 he received the Heinz Hopf Prize from ETH Zurich.

Selected publications

• Goresky, Mark; MacPherson, Robert, La dualité de Poincaré pour les espaces singuliers, C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris Sér. A-B 284 (1977), no. 24, A1549–A1551. MR0440533
• Goresky, Mark; MacPherson, Robert, Intersection homology theory, Topology 19 (1980), no. 2, 135–162. doi:10.1016/0040-9383(80)90003-8 MR0572580
• Goresky, Mark; MacPherson, Robert, Intersection homology. II, Inventiones Mathematicae 72 (1983), no. 1, 77–129. doi:10.1007/BF01389130 MR0696691

External links

• Robert MacPherson at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• IAS page, including links to publications and CV
• The work of Robert MacPherson

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