by June Barrow-Green
© Oxford University Press 2004 All rights reserved
Wolstenholme, Joseph (1829-1891), mathematician, was born on 30 September 1829 at Eccles, Lancashire, the son of Joseph Wolstenholme, a Methodist minister, and his wife, Elizabeth, née Clarke. Educated at Wesley College, Sheffield, he proceeded to St John's College, Cambridge, where he was admitted a pensioner on 1 July 1846. He was coached by Percival Frost and, having graduated third wrangler in 1850, obtained his MA in 1853. He was elected a fellow of his college on 29 March 1852. On 26 November 1852 he was elected to a fellowship at Christ's College, Cambridge, to which, under the college statutes, Lancashire men had a preferential claim. The same year he became an assistant tutor of Christ's. He served as an examiner for the mathematical tripos in 1854, 1856, 1863, and 1870, and as moderator in 1862, 1869, and 1870. He was awarded an ScD in 1883. In 1869 Wolstenholme vacated his fellowship upon his marriage to Thérèse Rosalia, daughter of Johann Kraus of Zürich. He remained in Cambridge as a private coach until his appointment in 1871 as first mathematical professor at the Royal Indian Engineering College, Coopers Hill.
Wolstenholme was joint author (with Percival Frost) of a Treatise on Solid Geometry (1863). He declined to be acknowledged as author in the second revised edition. He was also the author of A Book of Mathematical Problems on Subjects Included in the Cambridge Course (1867; enlarged 2nd edn, 1878; with corrections, 1893); First Principles of the Differential and Integral Calculus (1874), written for his students at Coopers Hill; and Examples for Practice in the Use of Seven-Figure Logarithms (1888). He published twenty-three mathematical papers, the majority concerned with questions of analytical geometry. Although mostly brief they are well regarded and demonstrate considerable skill and ingenuity. In 1862 he published an elementary result in number theory, which has become known as 'Wolstenholme's Theorem' despite having been anticipated by Edward Waring in 1782.
Although considered brilliant by his contemporaries, Wolstenholme's accomplishments were not widely recognized. He is best known for his book Mathematical Problems, of which the first edition (1891) contains 1628 and the second edition 2815 examples. About a hundred of the latter also appeared in the Educational Times. The original problems, many of which contain important results, encompassed almost all the mathematics subjects studied at Cambridge at the time and were designed specifically for students of the tripos. The book proved influential, providing a mainstay for several generations of undergraduates.
Wolstenholme had an encyclopaedic knowledge of English literature; at Cambridge he was renowned for reciting hundreds of lines of poetry while out walking. As an undergraduate he became friendly with Leslie Stephen. According to Stephen, Wolstenholme had gone to Coopers Hill because his 'Bohemian tastes and heterodox opinions had made a Cambridge career inadvisable' (Bell, 79). Stephen spoke unflatteringly about Wolstenholme's wife and every summer Wolstenholme went alone to stay with the Stephen family. Wolstenholme's home life was apparently so wretched that he 'consoled himself with mathematics and opium' (Bell, 79). It is generally agreed that Virginia Woolf, Stephen's daughter, based the character of Mr Augustus Carmichael in her novel To the Lighthouse (1927) on Wolstenholme.
At Coopers Hill, Wolstenholme settled into a routine of teaching but as time passed there was an increasing requirement for mathematics to be taught from a more practical perspective than the theoretical approach he espoused. In spite of formal requests to change, he refused to adapt and when he reached the age of sixty he was forced by the president of the college to retire. Wolstenholme died at his home, 13 Surrendale Place, Maida Vale, London, on 18 November 1891, leaving a widow and four sons. In 1893 a pension on the civil list was granted to his wife in recognition of his eminence as a mathematician and as a result of a petition signed by a number of members of the Cambridge University senate.
JUNE BARROW-GREEN
Sources
The Eagle, 17 (1893), 67-8
Venn, Alum. Cant.
F. W. Maitland, The life and letters of Leslie Stephen (1906), 48, 74
L. Stephen, Sir Leslie Stephen's mausoleum book, ed. A. Bell (1977), 79
R. Gow, 'Joseph Wolstenholme, Leslie Stephen and "To the lighthouse"', Bulletin of the Irish Mathematical Society, 34 (1995), 40-46
CGPLA Eng. & Wales (1891)
d. cert.
Wealth at death
£1659 7s. 7d.: probate, 18 Dec 1891, CGPLA Eng. & Wales
[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/29858]
GO TO THE OUP ARTICLE (Sign-in required)