John Wilson (6 August 1741, Applethwaite,

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, Westmorland) Robinson (2003), p. 50 was an

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

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 before going up to

Peterhouse Peterhouse is the oldest constituent college of the University of Cambridge in England, founded in 1284 by Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely. Today, Peterhouse has 254 undergraduates, 116 full-time graduate students and 54 fellows. It is quite o ...

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...

in 1757, where he was a student of

Edward Waring Edward Waring (15 August 1798) was a British mathematician. He entered Magdalene College, Cambridge as a sizar and became Senior wrangler in 1757. He was elected a Fellow of Magdalene and in 1760 Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, holding the ...

. He was

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 1761. He was later knighted, and became 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 knowledge, including mathemat ...

in 1782. He was Judge of Common Pleas from 1786 until his death in 1793.

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 {{UK-scientist-stub

See also

Notes

References