John Wilson (6 August 1741,
Applethwaite
Applethwaite is a village in the foothills of Skiddaw near Keswick in the English Lake District. It is in the Borough of Allerdale and the county of Cumbria, and forms part of the civil parish of Underskiddaw, which has a population of 282. ...
,
Westmorland
Westmorland (, formerly also spelt ''Westmoreland'';R. Wilkinson The British Isles, Sheet The British IslesVision of Britain/ref> is a historic county in North West England spanning the southern Lake District and the northern Dales. It had an ...
– 18 October 1793,
Kendal
Kendal, once Kirkby in Kendal or Kirkby Kendal, is a market town and civil parish in the South Lakeland district of Cumbria, England, south-east of Windermere and north of Lancaster. Historically in Westmorland, it lies within the dale of th ...
, Westmorland)
[ Robinson (2003), p. 50] was an
English mathematician and judge.
Wilson's theorem
In algebra and number theory, Wilson's theorem states that a natural number ''n'' > 1 is a prime number if and only if the product of all the positive integers less than ''n'' is one less than a multiple of ''n''. That is (using the notations of m ...
is named after him.
Wilson attended school in
Staveley, Cumbria
Staveley () is a village in the South Lakeland district, in Cumbria, England. Historic counties of England, Historically part of Westmorland, it is situated northwest of Kendal where the River Kent is joined by its tributary the River Gowan, C ...
before going up to
Peterhouse,
Cambridge in 1757,
where he was a student of
Edward Waring. He was
Senior Wrangler in 1761.
He was later knighted, and became a
Fellow of the Royal Society in 1782. He was
Judge of Common Pleas from 1786 until his death in 1793.
See also
*
Wilson prime
In number theory, a Wilson prime is a prime number p such that p^2 divides (p-1)!+1, where "!" denotes the factorial function; compare this with Wilson's theorem, which states that every prime p divides (p-1)!+1. Both are named for 18th-century E ...
Notes
References
* C. M. Neale (1907) ''The Senior Wranglers of the University of Cambridge''. Availabl
online* Robinson, Derek John Scott. ''An introduction to abstract algebra''. 2003. Walter de Gruyter.
1741 births
1793 deaths
18th-century English mathematicians
Number theorists
Fellows of the Royal Society
Alumni of Peterhouse, Cambridge
Justices of the Common Pleas
Senior Wranglers
People from Cumberland
People from Westmorland
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