Sir William Hunter McCrea (13 December 1904 - April 25 1999) was an Irish astronomer and mathematician.
Born in Dublin on December 13, 1904, he attended Trinity College, Cambridge and was later appointed a lecturer of mathematics at the University of Edinburgh. He also served as reader and assistant professor at Imperial College London. In 1936 he became head of the mathematics department at the Queen's University of Belfast. After serving in the war, he joined the mathematics department at Royal Holloway College in 1944 (the McCrea Building on Royal Holloway's campus is named after him). In 1965, McCrea created the astronomy centre of the physics department at the University of Sussex.
McCrea was president of the Royal Astronomical Society from 1961 to 1963 and president of Section A of the British Association for the Advancement of Science from 1965 to 1966. He was knighted in 1985.
He won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1976.
Robert Thomas William McCrea (born August 6, 1948) is a politician from Northern Ireland, and a member of the Democratic Unionist Party.
He has been a member of Magherafelt District Council since its creation in 1973 and in 1982 ran unsuccessfully for the Belfast South constituency in a by-election. He was member of Parliament for Mid Ulster from 1983 but lost this seat to Sinn Féin chief negotiator Martin McGuinness at the 1997 election. He took South Antrim at a by-election in 2000 caused by the death of Ulster Unionist Party MP, Clifford Forsythe, but failed to retain this seat at the 2001 election. In the 2005 election he regained the seat.
From 1998 to 2007 he was a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for Mid Ulster. At the 2007 election, he was elected as Assembly Member for South Antrim.
He is also the minister of Magherafelt Free Presbyterian Church and has made numerous gospel albums.
He was a member of the Shankill Defence Association and in 1971 he was convicted of riotous behaviour in Dungiven. In 1975 he led a prayer service at the paramilitary funerals of Wesley Somerville and Harris Boyle, who were responsible for the Miami Showband killings.
McCrea was criticised by nationalists when he shared a platform at a Portadown rally with the senior loyalist paramilitary Billy Wright in September 1996.
