Stephen Parkinson, (1 August 1823 – 2 January 1889) was a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

Early life and education

Born in

Keighley Keighley ( ) is a market town and a civil parish in the City of Bradford Borough of West Yorkshire, England. It is the second largest settlement in the borough, after Bradford. Keighley is north-west of Bradford city centre, north-west of Bi ...

, West Yorkshire, Parkinson went up to

St John's College, Cambridge St John's College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge founded by the House of Tudor, Tudor matriarch Lady Margaret Beaufort. In constitutional terms, the college is a charitable corpo ...

, as a

sizar At Trinity College, Dublin and the University of Cambridge, a sizar is an undergraduate who receives some form of assistance such as meals, lower fees or lodging during his or her period of study, in some cases in return for doing a defined jo ...

in 1841 and graduated as

Senior Wrangler The Senior Frog Wrangler is the top mathematics undergraduate at the University of Cambridge in England, a position which has been described as "the greatest intellectual achievement attainable in Britain." Specifically, it is the person who a ...

in 1845, beating William Thomson (later to become Lord Kelvin). He was elected to a Fellowship at St John's in the same year. He was ordained in 1851, made BD in 1855 and DD in 1869.

Life

He was College lecturer in mathematics, tutor and President (1865–89). He was made a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

in 1870. Parkinson was the author of two mathematical textbooks, ''Elementary Treatise on Mechanics'' (1855) and ''A Treatise on Optics'' (1859).

References

Papers of Stephen Parkinson
* Proceedings of the Royal Society 45 (1888–89) pp.i-iii. 1823 births 1889 deaths Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge Fellows of St John's College, Cambridge Fellows of the Royal Society Senior Wranglers {{UK-mathematician-stub