Edward Waring

Edward Waring
Edward Waring (ca. 1736–1798). Portrait by Thomas Kerrich, 1794.
Born	ca. 1736 Old Heath, Shropshire, England
Died	15 August 1798(1798-08-15) (aged 62) Plealey, Pontesbury, Shropshire, England
Residence	England
Nationality	British
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	University of Cambridge
Alma mater	Magdalene College, Cambridge
Notable students	John Wilson John Dawson
Known for	Waring's problem Waring's prime number conjecture
Notable awards	Copley Medal (1784)

Edward Waring FRS (c. 1736 – 15 August 1798) was an English 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 chair until his death. He made the assertion known as Waring's problem without proof in his writings Meditationes Algebraicae. Waring was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1763 and awarded the Copley Medal in 1784.

Waring was the eldest son of John and Elizabeth Waring, a prosperous farming couple. He received his early education in Shrewsbury School under a Mr Hotchkin and was admitted as a sizar at Magdalene College, Cambridge, on 24 March 1753, being also Millington exhibitioner. His extraordinary talent for mathematics was recognised from his early years in Cambridge. In 1757 he graduated BA as senior wrangler and on 24 April 1758 was elected to a fellowship at Magdalene. He belonged to the Hyson Club, whose members included William Paley.

At the end of 1759 Waring published the first chapter of Miscellanea Analytica. On 28 January the next year he was appointed Lucasian professor of mathematics, one of the highest positions in Cambridge. William Samuel Powell, then tutor in St John's College, Cambridge opposed Waring's election and instead supported the candidacy of William Ludlam. In the polemic with Powell, Waring was backed by John Wilson. In fact Waring was very young and did not hold the MA, necessary for qualifying for the Lucasian chair, but this was granted him in 1760 by royal mandate. In 1762 he published the full Miscellanea Analytica, mainly devoted to the theory of numbers and algebraic equations. In 1763 he was elected to the Royal Society. He was awarded its Copley Medal in 1784 but withdrew from the society in 1795, after he had reached sixty, 'on account of [his] age'. Waring was also a member of the academies of sciences of Göttingen and Bologna. In 1767 he took an MD degree, but his activity in medicine was quite limited. He carried out dissections with Richard Watson, professor of chemistry and later bishop of Llandaff. From about 1770 he was physician at Addenbrooke's Hospital at Cambridge, and he also practised at St Ives, Huntingdonshire, where he lived for some years after 1767. His career as a physician was not very successful since he was seriously short-sighted and a very shy man.