John Macnaghten Whittaker

John Macnaghten Whittaker FRS FRSE LLD (7 March 1905 – 29 January 1984) was a British mathematician and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield from 1953 to 1965.

Life Whittaker was born 7 March 1905 in Cambridge, the son of mathematician Edmund Taylor Whittaker and his wife, Mary Ferguson Macnaghten Boyd (grand-daughter of Thomas Jamieson Boyd).

He was educated at St Salvator's School in St Andrews then Fettes College in Edinburgh. He then studied Maths and Physics at Edinburgh University from the age of 15, graduating MA in 1924. He followed this by three years at Trinity College, Cambridge, gaining a second MA in 1927.

In 1927 started his academic career as an assistant lecturer in Mathematics at Edinburgh University. In 1928 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Ralph Allan Sampson, Charles Glover Barkla, Sir Charles Galton Darwin and George James Lidstone.

He was awarded a doctorate (DSc) in 1929, followed by a fellowship at Pembroke College, Cambridge, before becoming a professor of pure mathematics at Liverpool University in 1933.

During the Second World War he served with the Royal Artillery including time in the 8th Army on Field-Marshal Montgomery's staff in Egypt and Tunisia 1942/43.