John Truss

John Kenneth Truss, born in April 1947, is an English mathematician known for his work in mathematical logic, infinite permutation groups, homogeneous structures, and model theory. He holds the position of emeritus professor of pure mathematics at the University of Leeds.

Truss completed his undergraduate studies at King's College, Cambridge, graduating in 1968. He earned his PhD at the University of Leeds in 1973 with a dissertation titled "Some Results about Cardinal Numbers without the Axiom of Choice," supervised by Frank Drake.

In his early career, Truss served as a junior research fellow at the Mathematical Institute of the University of Oxford. Subsequently, he taught at a school in Kidderminster, Worcestershire, and from 1979 to 1985, he was a lecturer at Paisley College of Technology. In 1987, he worked at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, before joining the University of Leeds. At Leeds, he contributed to editing the collected papers of the Logic Colloquium '86, held in 1986 at the University of Hull, alongside Frank Drake. He has also collaborated with Peter Cameron, who acknowledged Truss's contributions in his notes on Oligomorphic Permutation Groups for helping to resolve conjectures.

Truss has authored books including "Discrete Mathematics for Computer Scientists" (1991) and "Foundations of Mathematical Analysis" (1997). His 1991 book received positive remarks for its organization and scope, although it was noted by some as more suitable for mathematicians than computer scientists.

He was co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of the London Mathematical Society until June 2003, sharing editorial duties with Jonathan Partington until succeeded by Francis Burstall and John Toland. Truss has also co-edited volumes of proceedings from conferences such as the Logic Colloquium '86 and the European meeting of the Association for Symbolic Logic held in Leeds in 1997.

In terms of family, Truss married Priscilla Mary Grasby in 1969, whom he met while they were students at Cambridge. They have a daughter, Elizabeth Truss, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and three sons. His political views and support for causes such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament have been noted, and he has not publicly supported his daughter in her political campaigns.

Selected publications by Truss include several journal articles, such as "The group of the countable universal graph" (1985), "Infinite permutation groups II. Subgroups of small index" (1989), and "Generic Automorphisms of Homogeneous Structures" (1992). His work has contributed to the fields of permutation groups, logic, and the structure of mathematical sets.

External references include his profile on ResearchGate and a personal website, along with video recordings of his lectures on homogeneous lattices at the Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery.