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Authorised form of nameWhittaker; Sir; Edmund Taylor (1873 - 1956); mathematician and astronomer
Dates1873 - 1956
NationalityBritish
Place of birthBirkdale, Lancashire, England
Date of birth24 October 1873
Place of death48 George Square, Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
Date of death24/03/1956
DatesAndPlacesBurial: Mount Vernon Cemetery in Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
Occupationmathematician and astronomer
Research fieldHistory of science
Astronomy
Mathematics
Numerical analysis
Celestial mechanics
Mathematical physics
Applied mathematics
ActivityEducation: Taught by his mother (1884); Manchester Grammar School; Trinity College, Cambridge (1892-1895) MA.
Career: Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge (1896) remaining there as a teacher (1906); co-founded the series of Cambridge Tracts in Mathematics and Mathematical Physics, an influential series of short volumes designed to introduce the principal elements of specific modern developments (1905); appointed professor of astronomy in the University of Dublin, with the title of royal astronomer of Ireland (1906); elected to the professorship of mathematics at Edinburgh where he taught until his retirement in 1946 and where he achieved the institution of the first mathematical laboratory in Britain, the establishment of a research school, and the development of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society (1912).
Honours:
Kt 1945
Memberships:
FRSE (President 1939–44)
Mathematical Association (President 1920–21)
British Association (1927)
London Mathematical Society (1928–9)
Trinity College, Cambridge (Honorary fellow 1949)
Pontifical Academy of Sciences (1936)
Awards/Medals:
Smith Prize 1897
Gunning Prize 1929
De Morgan Medal 1935
Membership categoryFellow
Date of election11/05/1905
Age at election32
ProposerAndrew Russell Forsyth; Hrace Darwin; Robert Stawell Ball; James Whitbread Lee Glaisher; Edward John Routh; William Burnside; Ernest William Hobson; Henry rederickF Baker; Percy Alexander MacMahon
RSActivityRoyal Society roles:
VP 1934-1935
Council 1911–12 and 1933–5
Medals and prizes:
Sylvester Medal 1931; Copley Medal 1954
RelationshipsParents: John Whittaker, gentleman, youngest son of the first marriage of Henry Whittaker (1780-1853) of Grindleton near Clitheroe, who was the sixth of the eight sons of Richard Whittaker of Rodhill Gate near Grindleton, and Selina Septima, daughter of Edmund Taylor, who practised as a physician at Middleton, near Manchester.
Spouse: Mary Ferguson McNaghten, daughter of the Revd Thomas Boyd, of Cambridge, Scottish secretary of the Religious Tract Society; and granddaughter of Sir Thomas Jamieson Boyd.
Children: Three sons and two daughters. Their second son, John McNaghten Whittaker (Jack), was professor of pure mathematics at Liverpool (1933–52) and vice-chancellor of the University of Sheffield (1952–65).
PublishedWorksRCN R67774
OtherInfoContributed to pure mathematics, specifically to the theories of interpolation, of automorphic functions, of potential theory, and of special functions.
Wrote numerous philosophical and historical papers and books.
Obtained a general solution of Laplace's equation.
Royal Society Obituary or MemoirClick to view (may be contained within a meeting notice, presidential address or list of death notices)
SourceSources:
Bulloch's Roll; DSB
Obituaries:
Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 1956 vol 2 pp 299-325, plate, by G Temple
References:
R W Home, 'The Royal Society and the Empire: the colonial and Commonwealth Fellowship. Part 2. After 1847' in NR 2003 vol 57 pp 47-84
Virtual International Authority Filehttp://viaf.org/viaf/17285013
CodeNA2270
Archives associated with this Fellow
RefNoTitleDate
EC/1905/15Whittaker, Sir Edmund Taylor: certificate of election to the Royal Society
MM/22/45Letter from Augustus Edward Hough Love, 34 St Margaret's Road, Oxford, to [Edmund Taylor] Whittaker31 October 1903
MM/22/44Letter from Joseph Larmor, St John's College, Cambridge, to [Edmund Taylor] Whittaker18 October 1902
MM/22/43Letter from Augustus Edward Hough Love, Oxford, to [Edmund Taylor] Whittaker15 October 1902
RR/19/113Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'A new treatment of optical aberrations' by Ralph Allen Sampson[May 1912]
NLB/17/56Copy letter from Arthur William Rucker, to Edmund Taylor Whittaker, [Fellow of the Royal Society]8 July 1898
NLB/16/707Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to E T Whittaker, Trinity College, Cambridge23 May 1898
NLB/37/757Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison to Professor J Larmor, Secretary of the Royal Society9 May 1908
NLB/45/696Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison to Professor E [Edmund] T [Taylor] Whittaker FRS25 April 1912
NLB/51/703Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, Assistant Secretary of the Royal Society to Professor Professor Edmund Taylor Whittaker FRS28 May 1915
RR/18/164Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Pendulum clocks and their errors' by Henry Reginald Arnulph Mallock21 June 1911
RR/22/11Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'On certain linear differential equations of astronomical interest' by Henry Frederick BakerJune 1915
RR/19/67Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'A critical study of spectral series.–Part II. The p and s sequences and the atomic volume term' by William Mitchinson Hicks[February 1912]
RR/20/64Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'A critical study of spectral series - Part III - The atomic weight term and its import in the constitution of spectra' by William Mitchinson HicksJune 1913
RR/19/115Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'On a cassegrain reflector with corrected field' by Ralph Allen Sampson[January 1913]
RR/21/155Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Approximately permanent electronic orbits and the origin of spectral series' by George Walker Walker[November 1914]
RR/23/41Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker on a paper 'A critical study of spectral series - Part IV -The structure of spark spectra' by William Mitchinson HicksJune 1916
RR/63/107Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'On bipartitional functions' by P V SukhatmeApril 1937
RR/25/4Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'On an expansion of the point- potential' by Arthur William Conway[March 1918]
RR/27/119Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Oblate spheroidal harmonics and their applications' by John William NicholsonDecember 1922
RR/31/88Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'On the electric capacity of certain solids of revolution' by D M Winch10 February 1925
RR/32/116Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'The electrostatic capabilities of two spheres and of two parallel cylinders' by A Russell24 March 1925
RR/35/37Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'On periodic solutions of Hamiltonian systems differential equations' by Thomas MacFarland CherryJuly 1927
NLB/58/495Copy letter from James Hopwood Jeans, Secretary of the Royal Society; to [Frederick John Marrian] Stratton Esquire, FRS13 May 1920
RR/14/105Letter from William Burnside, to Mr Harrison, regarding a paper 'On the connexion of algebraic functions with automorphic functions' by Edmund Taylor Whittaker9 May 1898
RR/29/26Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whitaker, on a paper 'On a class of transcendents of which the bessel functions are a particular case' by Percy Alexander MacMahonJune 1923
RR/44/129Referee's report by Arthur Stanley Eddington, on a paper 'On the definition of distance in curved space, and the displacement of the spectral lines of distant sources' by Edmund Taylor WhittakerJuly 1931
RR/46/105Second referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'On Eddington's problem of the expansion of the universe by condensation' by N R Sen[January 1933]
RR/47/51Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'The concepts of inverse probability and fiducial probability referring to unknown parameters' by Ronald Aylmer FisherNovember 1932
RR/52/147Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'The application of substitutional analysis to invariants' by Alfred YoungSeptember 1934
NLB/70/685Copy letter from Francis Alexander Towle, Assistant Secretary of the Royal Society; to Professor [Edmund Taylor] Whittaker, FRS1 July 1927
RR/24/91Referee's report by Thomas John I'Anson Bromwich and Godfrey Harold Hardy, on a paper 'On the numerical solution of integral-equations' by Edmund Taylor Whittaker28 February 1918
RR/55/19Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Statistical information and properties of sufficiency' by Maurice Stevenson BartlettOctober 1935
RR/54/80Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'The theory of Saturn's rings' by C G PendseSeptember 1934
RR/37/148Referee's report by Arthur Stanley Eddington, on a paper 'On the potential of electromagnetic phenomena in a gravitational field' by Edmund Taylor WhittakerMay 1928
RR/54/81Second referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'The theory of Saturn's rings' by C G PendseOctober 1934
RR/69/234Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'On the conservation of momentum' by Edward Arthur Milne1945
RR/62/90Referee's report by Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, on a paper 'On the relations of the tensor-calculus to the spinor-calculus' by Edmund Taylor Whittaker[October 1936]
RR/57/49Referee's report by Arthur Stanley Eddington, on a paper 'On Gauss' theorem and the concept of mass in general relativity' by Edmund Taylor Whittaker[January 1935]
RR/59/52Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Relativistic wave equations' by Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac[April 1936]
RR/72/262Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Some theorums on pertubation theory' by E C Titchmarsh1949
RR/70/233Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'The method of the hypercircle in function-space for boundary-value problems' by John Lighton Synge1947
NLB/64/723Copy letter from Francis Alexander Towle, Assistant Secretary of the Royal Society; to Prof. [Edmund Taylor] Whittaker. FRS9 June 1923
RR/69/110Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Some applications of the Riesz potential to the theory of the electromagnetic field and the meson field' by N E Fremberg1946
RR/69/181Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'An invariant form for the prior probability in estimation problems' by Harold Jeffreys1945
RR/68/389Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'On invariant theory under restricted groups' by D E Littlewood29 December 1943
RR/72/218Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Unified field theory in six dimensions' by J Podolanski1949
RR/72/200Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'The relativity of Galilean frames' by Edward Arthur Milne1949
RR/71/34Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Unified field theory in a curvature-free five-dimensional manifold' by J G Bennett, R L Brown and M W Thring[1948]
RR/72/81Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'The velocity of sound in general relativity, with a discussion of the problem of the fluid sphere with constant velocity of sound' by A R Curtis1949
NLB/66/411Copy letter from Francis Alexander Towle, Assistant Secretary of the Royal Society; to Prof. [Sydney] Chapman, FRS3 May 1924
RR/38/25Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'On the criteria for the stability of small motions' by Robert Alexander Frazer and William Jolly DuncanMay 1929
RR/33/27Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Periodic orbits of the second genus near the straight-line equilibrium points in the problem of three bodies' by Daniel BuchananOctober 1926
RR/48/93Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Two new properties of mathematical likelihood' by Ronald Aylmer Fisher[January 1934]
RR/48/94Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Probability likelihood and quantity of information in the logic of uncertain inference' by Ronald Aylmer Fisher[January 1934]
NLB/64/751Copy letter from James Hopwood Jeans, Secretary of the Royal Society; to Professor [Horace] Lamb [Chairman of the Mathematics Committee] FRS14 June 1923
MM/10/12"On the consequences of postulating a minimum observable length in physical theory", by Sir Edmund Whittaker1948
RR/31/83Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Problems in two-dimensional electrostatics' by D M Winch[June 1924]
RR/34/132Referee's report by George Barker Jeffery, on a paper 'On Hilbert's world-function' by Edmund Taylor Whittaker[November 1926]
RR/62/87Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'On a system of functional dynamics and optics' by W H Watson[July 1936]
RR/68/387Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Invariant theory, tensors and group characters' by D E Littlewood[1943]
NLB/66/626Copy letter from James Hopwood Jeans, Secretary of the Royal Society; to the General Secretary, Royal Society of Edinburgh, Edinburgh5 June 1924
RR/56/84Second referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Linear transformations of sequences' by Richard Rado4 December 1935
NLB/66/517Copy letter from James Hopwood Jeans, Secretary of the Royal Society; to Prof. [Sydney] Chapman, FRS22 May 1924
NLB/66/658Copy letter from James Hopwood Jeans, Secretary of the Royal Society; to [Sydney] Chapman13 June 1924
RR/32/134Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Laplace's equation and surfaces of revolution' by D M Wrich and John William Nicholson10 February 1925
RR/64/67Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'On the relation between direct and inverse methods in statistics' by Harold Jeffreys[March 1937]
RR/73/52Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'The structure of linear relativistic wave equations. II. Representations' by Kenneth James Le Couteur4 March 1950
RR/46/104Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'On Eddington's problem of the expansion of the universe by condensation' by N R Sen1 July 1932
RR/51/131Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'On the independence of sums of squares in the analysis of variance' by S S Wilks24 April 1934
RR/14/104Referee's report by Andrew Russell Forsyth, on a paper 'On the connexion of algebraic functions with automorphic functions' by Edmund Taylor Whittaker2 May 1898
RR/14/106Referee's report by William Burnside, on a paper 'On the connexion of algebraic functions with automorphic functions' by Edmund Taylor Whittaker9 May 1898
RR/17/397Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'On the nature of the diffraction figures due to the heliometer' by Philip Francis EverittOctober 1909
RR/17/412Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'A critical study of spectral series.— Part I. The alkalies H and He' by William Mitchinson Hicks[December 1909]
RR/24/74Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'The electrostatic problem of a conducting sphere in a spherical cavity' by Alexander Russell[1917]
RR/25/20Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'A critical study of spectral series.—Part V. The spectra of the monatomic gases' by William Mitchinson Hicks[August 1918]
RR/31/31Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'The electrification of two parallel circular discs' by John William Nicholson[May 1924]
RR/34/68Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'An analysis of the electromagnetic field into moving elements' by Samuel Roslington Milner[November 1926]
RR/38/24Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'On the numerical solution of equations with complex roots' by Robert Alexander Frazer and William Jolly DuncanMay 1929
RR/39/37Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'On periodic orbits for atoms of the helium type' by D Buchanan[October 1929]
RR/41/15Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Mathematical properties of a continuum' by W BandApril 1930
RR/44/58Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'On the moment distributions of moments in the case of samples drawn from a limited universe' by L IsserlisMay 1931
RR/45/116Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'On the theory of errors and least squares' by Harold Jeffreys[August 1932]
RR/48/54Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Probability, statistics, and the theory of errors' by Harold Jeffreys[March 1933]
RR/49/3Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'On the interaction between several species of hosts and parasites' by V A Bailey[June 1933]
RR/49/12Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Probability and chance in the theory of statistics' by Maurice Stevenson Bartlett[May 1933]
RR/56/55Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Sufficient statistics and uniformly most powerful tests of statistical hypotheses' by J Neyman and Egon Sharpe Pearson[December 1935]
RR/56/83Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Linear transformations of sequences' by Richard Rado29 August 1935
RR/61/90Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Quaternion treatment of the relativistic wave equation' by Arthur William ConwayJune 1937
RR/68/91Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'On the significance tests for the introduction of new functions to represent measures' by Harold Jeffreys[1941]
RR/73/186Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Fermi-Dirac functions of integral order' by P Rhodes14 August 1950
MC/23/483Letter from [Edmund Taylor] Whittaker, Dunsink Observatory, Co Dublin, to Mr [Robert] Harrison, [Royal Society]28 May 1908
NLB/37/843Copy Letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison to Professor E [Edmund] T [Taylor] Whittaker, Fellow of the Royal Society, Dunsink Observatory, Co. Dublin22 May 1908
RR/73/51Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'The structure of the linear relativistic wave equations. I' by Kenneth James Le Couteur4 March 1950
RR/73/16Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Some theorems on perturbation theory. III' by Edward Charles Titchmarsh1950
RR/75/122Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Spinning test-particles in general relativity. II' by E Corinaldesi and A Papapetrou4 June1951
RR/75/125Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Spinning test-particles in general relativity' by A Papapetrou31 May 1951
MC/26/278Letter from [Edmund Taylor] Whittaker, Dunsink Observatory, Castleknock, to Mr [Robert] Harrison, [Royal Society]3 October 1911
RR/75/101Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Some theorems on perturbation theory III' by Edward Charles Titchmarsh10 April 1951
MC/21/656Letter from [Edmund Taylor] Whittaker, Cambridge, to [Robert William Frederick] Harrison11 June 1906
RR/75/198Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Some theorems on perturbation theory IV' by Edward Charles Titchmarsh3 August 1951
RR/77/88Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'The reaction of Eddington's E-numbers to the tensor calculus. II. An extension of tensor transformation theory' by Samuel Roslington Milner29 May 1952
MC/22/515Letter from [Edmund Taylor] Whittaker, Dunsink Observatory, Co. Dublin, to [Robert William Frederick] Harrison21 January 1907
RR/73/155Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'Eigenfunction problems with periodic potentials' by [Edward Charles] Titchmarsh28 June 1950
MC/22Volume 22 of miscellaneous correspondence regarding business matters, sent to the Royal Society1907
MC/21Volume 21 of miscellaneous correspondence regarding business matters, sent to the Royal Society1906
RR/77/23Letter from Jacob Lionel Bakst Cooper, on a paper 'The representation of analytic functions by infinite series' by W F Newns, to D C Martin, assistant secretary of the Royal Society20 May 1952
RR/77/232Letter from Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'On sound waves of finite amplitude' by E T Copson, to D C Martin2 December 1952
RR/77/87Referee's report by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, on a paper 'The relation of Eddington's E-numbers to the tensor calculus. I. The matrix form of E-numbers' by Samuel Roslington Milner29 May 1952
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