Peter LANCASTER is currently Professor Emeritus and Faculty Professor at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Calgary, Canada.

He first graduated with an honours degree in mathematics from the University of Liverpool in 1952.  After five years in the aircraft industry he took a teaching post at the University of Singapore where his research career began in earnest.  He obtained a PhD in mathematics in the University of Singapore in 1964, becoming the first person awarded such a degree since the founding of Raffles College.  He joined the fledgling University of Calgary in 1962, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1984.

He has published texts, monographs and many research papers in matrix theory and related fields as applied to vibrations, numerical analysis, systems theory, and signal processing.  He has travelled, lectured, and collaborated with individuals around the world.

Among many other tasks on the Canadian and international scenes, he served as Head of Department from 1973 to 1997, and President of the Canadian Mathematical Society from 1979 to 1981.  He won a Humboldt Research Award in the year 2000 tenable at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany, and is currently an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, England.