‘A man who has infinite capacity for making things go’: Sir Edmund Taylor Whittaker (1873–1956)

Abstract

Among the leading mathematicians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was British mathematician and astronomer, Sir Edmund Taylor Whittaker. Born in Southport, in the north of England, Whittaker began his career at the University of Cambridge, before moving to Dunsink to become Royal Astronomer of Ireland and Andrews Professor of Astronomy at Trinity College, Dublin, and finishing in Scotland as Professor of Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh. Whittaker completed original work in a variety of fields, ranging from pure mathematics to mathematical physics and astronomy, as well as publishing on topics in philosophy, history, and theology. Whittaker is also noted as the first person to have opened a mathematical laboratory—with the focus on numerical analysis—in Great Britain. The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of Whittaker's life, both as an academic and a person.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Jennifer Toews, from the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto and Professor June Barrow-Green, for her continued help in writing this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 The Langworthy Scholarship, bequeathed in the will of businessman and politician Edward Ryley Langworthy, was a £20 award ‘open to general competition amongst the students at the [Manchester] Grammar School, to be tenable for one year, “as a reward for the proficiency in one or more of the following branches of study, namely:- classics, mathematics, physical science, and modern languages”’ (Anon 1874, 5).

2 The Sheepshanks Astronomical Exhibition was a three-year scholarship at £50 a year donated to the University in the name of astronomer Richard Sheepshanks, FRS, by his sister Anne after his death in 1855.

3 The Mathematical Tripos is the mathematical course at the University of Cambridge. Those graduating with first class honours degrees were referred to as ‘Wranglers’, with the Senior Wrangler being top of the class.

4 Ernest William Hobson had been the coach of Philippa Fawcett who caused a sensation in the Mathematical Tripos of 1890 by scoring more marks than the Senior Wrangler. Although at that time women could sit the Tripos examinations, they were not ranked alongside the men. Hence Fawcett was described as ‘above the Senior Wrangler’.

5 The Senior Wrangler was Thomas J l’A Bromwich (1875–1929). There was also a rumour that Grace had been in the lead after the penultimate paper but celebrated a day too early, leading to his losing the title (Todd 1959, 113).

6 Grace was made Fellow of Peterhouse and Bromwich of St Johns in 1897.

7 The Smith's Prize was established in 1768 at the bequest of Robert Smith. Originally, the prize was awarded via examination, but from 1885 it was awarded based on an essay; see (Barrow-Green 1999).

8 Twenty-one of Whittaker's letters home to his mother, dating between 17 January and 11 December 1896, were found at a bookshop in Sheffield and are now available online, see (Whittaker 1896).

9 The Isaac Newton studentship at the University of Cambridge was first awarded in 1891 for the encouragement of study and research in astronomy, open to Bachelors of Arts under the age of 25. Had Whittaker won it, he would have been awarded the sum of £250 a year for three years.

10 The Tyson medal is an annual award for the best performance in astronomy-related subjects at the University of Cambridge. It is named after its benefactor, Henry Tyson (d.1852) and was awarded for the first time in 1881.

11 The three-body problem of dynamical astronomy is the determination of the motion in space of three point masses which attract each other according to Newton's law. Historically, the problem often related to the Sun, Moon, and Earth.

12 Watson is also well known for his Treatise on the theory of Bessel Functions, first published in 1922 (Watson 1922).

13 In the preface of the fourth edition, Whittaker thanked his son-in-law Edward Copson (1901–1980) for his ‘trouble which he has taken in supplying us with a somewhat lengthy list [of corrections and minor errors]’ (Whittaker & Watson 1940). Another of Whittaker's obituarists, Daniel Martin, who lectured in the mathematics department at the University of Glasgow for thirty-three years, pointed out that Modern Analysis had ‘some inadequacies’ including his treatment of Cauchy's integral theorem (Martin 1958, 1).

14 Charles Martin, MA transferred from Greenwich Observatory to become an assistant to the Royal Astronomer of Ireland, Dr A A Rambaut, in around 1895 and remained at Dunsink until his death in 1936. Martin became Acting Director of the Observatory in 1921, after the position of Royal Astronomer of Ireland was left vacant (Anon 1936, 4; Hutchins 2008, 402–403).

15 Further details on the development and influence of Whittaker's mathematical laboratory will be given in a forthcoming paper by Maidment.

16 Arthur Erdélyi (1908–1977) was a Hungarian-Jewish mathematician who had to flee Prague, where he was studying at the University, due to the Nazi invasion. As Erdélyi had been working on hypergeometric functions, on which Whittaker was one of the leading experts, Erdélyi wrote to Whittaker requesting help. Whittaker was able to find Erdélyi a position and helped him with travel expenses. After a successful career at both Edinburgh and Caltech, Erdélyi returned to Edinburgh in 1964 where he was appointed to the chair of mathematics.

17 Cargill Gilston Knott (1856–1922) was one of the founding members of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society. A mathematician and physicist, by 1913 Knott was a reader in applied mathematics at the University of Edinburgh and went on to carry out pioneering research in seismology (Whittaker 1924, 237–248).

18 A reprint of the fourth edition was published by Dover in 1967. In 1969, the reprint was reviewed alongside two other books on numerical analysis and unsurprisingly—given developments in the field—it didn't stand up against them (Howlett 1969, 108).

19 Max Born (1882–1970) was a German physicist and mathematician known for his work in quantum theory. From 1936 he was the Tait Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh. Born went on to win the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physics for his statistical studies of wave functions.

20 John Macnaghten Whittaker (1905–1984) was himself a successful mathematician. He went on to become Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield.