1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Routh, Edward John

ROUTH, EDWARD JOHN (1831–1907), English mathematician, was born at Quebec on the 20th of January 1831. At the age of eleven he came to England, and after studying under A. de Morgan at University College, London, entered Peterhouse, Cambridge, in 1851. In the mathematical tripos three years later he was senior Wrangler, beating J. Clerk Maxwell, who, however, tied with him for the Smith’s prize. Elected a fellow of his college, he devoted himself to teaching, and quickly- proved himself one of the most successful mathematical “coaches ” ever known at Cambridge. In thirty years, of some 700 pupils who passed through his hands 500 became Wranglers; and for twenty-two successive years, from 1861 to 1882, the senior Wrangler was trained by him. He made considerable contributions to scientific literature, and among his publications were: An Analytical View of Newton’s Principia, with Lord Brougham (1855); an Essay on the Stability of a given State of Motion, which won the Adams prize in 1877; and treatises on the Dynamics of Rigid Bodies, on Analytical Statics, and on the Dynamics of a Particle. He died at Cambridge on the 7th of June 1907.