Lancaster was born in
Appleby,
England, and attended
Sir John Deane's Grammar School and the
Liverpool Collegiate School. After an unsuccessful year in the
University of Liverpool School of Architecture, he joined the mathematics program in the same university, graduating with an
honours degree in 1952. Lancaster thereupon worked as an
aerodynamicist with the
English Electric Company until 1957, completing a Master's degree at the same time under the supervision of
Louis Rosenhead. He took a teaching post at the
University of Malaya, from which he was granted a
PhD in 1964, and moved to
Canada in November 1962 to work at the
University of Calgary. Lancaster held visiting positions at the
California Institute of Technology (1965–66), the
University of Basel (1968–69), and the
University of Dundee (1975–76) as well as shorter stays at the Universities of
Münster,
Tel Aviv,
Konstanz, and
Ben-Gurion. Lancaster served as Department Chairman from 1973 to 1977, and President of the
Canadian Mathematical Society from 1979 to 1981. He was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1984, and was the recipient of the
Jeffery%E2%80%93Williams Prize in 1991. Lancaster received a
Humboldt Research Award in 2000. In 2018 the
Canadian Mathematical Society listed him in their inaugural class of fellows. ==See also==