In 1911 Bell was appointed Lecturer in Mathematics and awarded a
D.Sc. by the university for his treatise on the geometry of three dimensions, published in book form in 1910 as
An Elementary Treatise on Co-ordinate Geometry of Three Dimensions. An instant success, this textbook was to be translated into other languages, including Japanese and three of the languages of the Indian sub-continent. The textbook ran to a third edition (1944) and, from 1938, chapters 1–9 were issued separately as
Co-ordinate Solid Geometry. It has since been reprinted (BiblioBazaar, 2009.) In March 1899 Bell had become a member of
Edinburgh Mathematical Society and from 1911–1920 he served as editor of the Society’s journal, the
Proceedings, during which time he also contributed papers such as
Note on the axes of a normal section of the enveloping cylinder of a conchoid, presented to the Society’s meeting of 9 January 1914. On 6 March 1916, Bell was elected to the
Royal Society of Edinburgh, his proposers being George Alexander Gibson,
Professor of Mathematics, Glasgow; the physicist
Andrew Gray,
Professor of Natural Philosophy, Glasgow; Robert Alexander Houstoun, and Diarmid Noel Paton,
Regius Professor of Physiology, Glasgow (and eldest son of the artist
Sir Joseph Noel Paton.) In 1920 Bell was appointed Professor of Pure and Applied Mathematics at the
University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. At Otago he joined another former pupil of
Hamilton Academy and near contemporary, the physicist
Robert Jack who had also gone on to graduate from Glasgow
M.A. with Honours in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy and who had also been awarded a
D.Sc. from Glasgow. Robert Jack had arrived at Otago six years before Bell, in 1914, taking up the appointment as Professor of Physics. Like Robert Jack, Robert Bell went on to serve also as Chairman of the university’s Professorial Board and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science. (Bell also held the positions as a representative member on the Academic Board of the
University of New Zealand and on the University of New Zealand Senate from 1939 to 1946.) These two former Hamilton Academy boys from Scotland were to serve together on the faculty of the University of Otago (until Robert Jack’s retirement in 1947; Bell retiring a year later) in a building built by
another former pupil of Hamilton Academy, Robert Forrest of McGill and Forrest, contractors, Dunedin. He died in Dunedin. == Awards ==