Waring, Edward (1736-1798), mathematician and Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge

• Edward Waring, MD, FRS

Matriculated in 1753; Senior Wrangler, 1757; Fellow, 1758-1776.

At the age of 24 he was elected Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, 1760-1798.
Fellow of the Royal Society, 1763 – Copley medallist.

Although a qualified (if nervous) physician, he abandoned medicine for mathematics and became ‘Magdalene’s greatest mathematical don. In his prime he was the most famous mathematician in England…lonely, disturbed, isolated…a mathematical genius’ (Dr S. Martin). He wrote ‘one of the most abstruse books written on the abstrusest parts of Algebra’, which made his name famous throughout Europe.

Venn, John and Venn, John Archibald, Alumni Cantabrigienses

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

College Magazine, No. 38 (1993-94) pp. 31-33 (S. Martin)

Koshy, Thomas Elementary Number theory with Applications, ch. 12

Knox, K.C & Noakes, R.J., From Newton to Hawking: a History of Cambridge University’s Lucasian Professors of Mathematics