Whittaker, Edmund Taylor (1873–1956)

British mathematician and physicist, professor of mathematics at Edinburgh University 1912–46. He worked principally on differential equations, but was also interested in relativity theory and analytical dynamics. In his principal study, A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity: the Modern Theories (1910, revised 1931, 1953), he gave a comprehensive review of theories of atomism and electromagnetism.

Whittaker was born at Birkdale, Lancashire (now Merseyside), and educated at Manchester Grammar School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He taught at Cambridge from 1896, before being appointed Astronomer Royal for Ireland and professor of astronomy at the University of Dublin in 1906. Employing the ‘special functions’ of physics, he solved differential equations such as Laplace's Equation, and devised a unified theory of these functions based on ‘confluent hypergeometric functions’. He was the author of several important phyics textbooks, including A Course of Modern Analysis (1902) and A Treatise on the Analytical Dynamics of Particles and Rigid Bodies, (1937).