Ernest Duncan

Ernest Roland Duncan (25 January 1916 – November 25, 1990) was a mathematician born in New Zealand, who became a headmaster in Australia and a professor in America .

Duncan was born in Clyde, New Zealand, and graduated from the University of Otago. As an educator, he rose to the position of inspector of schools for the New Zealand Education Department and made a significant contribution to the introduction of the new mathematics curriculum. He wrote textbooks that were extensively used in New Zealand primary schools and were also published in the United States. In 1958, he moved to the North America as a university lecturer and received his doctorate from Columbia University.

In 1961, Duncan became headmaster of Newington College, an inner-city Sydney private boys school. Shortly thereafter, he immediately proposed that the school should be moved to a larger site in the northern suburbs, but this suggestion met with resistance from the college council. Before the end of the academic year, however, he had resigned and returned to the United States.

In 1962, Duncan became professor of mathematics at Rutgers University and at the time of his retirement, in 1977, was chairman of the department of curriculum and instruction in the Graduate School of Education. In 1982, he set aside a Trust fund to endow annual awards for "excellent teachers of Mathematics" in New Zealand and the United States. He died in a Morristown, New Jersey hospital of leukemia on November 25, 1990. He lived in Bernardsville, New Jersey and was survived by his wife, Lois, two daughters and a son.