Brian H. Murdoch  Brian H. Murdoch (born 1930) is an Irish mathematician who served for 33 years as Erasmus Smith's Professor of Mathematics at Trinity College Dublin (TCD). He is an analyst with expertise in potential functions and random walks. Brian Hughes Murdoch was born in 1930 in Dublin, and obtained a BA in mathematics  in 1951 from TCD, where he was also a Scholar. In 1955, he got his PhD at Princeton under William Feller, for a thesis on “Preharmonic Functions.” After a couple of years teaching at Hull University in Kingston upon Hull and Queens University Belfast, he returned to TCD, where he taught for another 35 years. He was elected Fellow of TCD in 1965, and the following year he was appointed Erasmus Smith's Professor of Mathematics at TCD, a position he held until 1989. In 1988 he became a Senior Fellow. A Quaker, he is a cousin of the author Iris Murdoch.