Edmund Taylor Whittaker

Sir Edmund Taylor Whittaker was a British mathematician, physicist and historian of science, born on 24 October 1873. He was a leading mathematical scholar of the early twentieth century who contributed widely to applied mathematics and was renowned for his research in mathematical physics and numerical analysis, including the theory of special functions, along with contributions to astronomy, celestial mechanics, the history of physics and digital signal processing. He received an entrance scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge in December 1891, and held the chair of mathematics at the University of Edinburgh for three decades. He was president of the London Mathematical Society from 1928 to 1929 and was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1944. His best known publications include A Course of Modern Analysis, known as Whittaker and Watson, Analytical Dynamics of Particles and Rigid Bodies, and A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity.