William Burnside

William Burnside was an English mathematician, born in London on 2 July 1852, known mostly as an early researcher in the theory of finite groups. He went to school at Christs Hospital until 1871 and attended St Johns and Pembroke Colleges at the University of Cambridge, where he was the Second Wrangler, bracketed with George Chrystal, in 1875. He lectured at Cambridge for ten years before being appointed professor of mathematics at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich. Although Greenwich was a little outside the main centres of British mathematical research, Burnside remained a very active researcher and published more than 150 papers. His work on finite groups was not a widely studied subject in Britain in the late nineteenth century and took some years to gain widespread recognition, and it merited his election as a fellow of the Royal Society in 1893.