Rate My Professor David Easdown

David Easdown is an Associate Professor of Mathematics in the School of Mathematics and Statistics, Faculty of Science, at the University of Sydney. He earned a BA from the Australian National University and a PhD from Monash University. His career at the University of Sydney spans decades, advancing from lecturer to associate professor. Previously, he served as Deputy Head of School and editor of Communications in Algebra. Easdown has supervised numerous honours and postgraduate students, including PhD candidates such as Andrew Solomon (1996), Joseph Lau (1997), Brett McElwee (1998), and Clare Coleman. For his supervisory excellence, he shared the 2005 Vice-Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Higher Degree Research Supervision with Professor Merlin Crossley and Associate Professor Anthony Masters. He is a member of the Algebra Research Group and contributes to undergraduate mathematics education development across all levels, particularly at the secondary-tertiary interface.

Easdown's academic interests center on algebra, with recent focus on permutation group theory, combinatorial semigroup theory, inverse semigroups, Rees quotients, biordered sets, and minimal faithful permutation degrees of groups. In mathematics education, his work examines threshold concepts, SOLO taxonomy, syntactic and semantic reasoning, proof construction, and novel assessment methods. He has produced over 50 publications garnering more than 640 citations, including "ON IDENTITIES OF REES QUOTIENTS OF FREE INVERSE SEMIGROUPS DEFINED BY POSITIVE RELATORS" (2025), "On finite presentations of inverse semigroups with zero having polynomial growth" (2019), "Absorption of Direct Factors With Respect to the Minimal Faithful Permutation Degree of a Finite Group" (2016), and "Biordered sets and fundamental semigroups" (2010). Easdown authored the textbook A First Course in Linear Algebra, published by Pearson Education Australia and used by students in Australia and overseas. His teaching includes MATH1002 Linear Algebra and Discrete Mathematics. On Coursera, he created Introduction to Linear Algebra (launched 2023), Introduction to Advanced Calculus (2024), and Introduction to Calculus, enhancing accessible mathematics learning.