Abstract
THE old Tripos admitted of very little specialization, and a Senior Wrangler was bound to have a competent knowledge of every branch of mathematical science known to the Cambridge of his day. The emphasis was generally on mathematical physics, in which England led the world ; and Forsyth's first original paper-written when he was still an undergraduate-was on the motion of a viscous incompressible fluid. Immediately after taking his degree, he began to work on a fellowship dissertation ; for some time he toyed with the kinetic theory of gases, but finding this unprofitable, he turned to an idea which had occurred to him when listening to Glaisher's advanced course on elliptic functions, and in two months produced the great memoir on the double theta functions, which occupies 79 pages of the Phil Trans.,173, and which, besides winning the fellowship, laid the foundation of his lame as an original investigator.
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WHITTAKER, E. [Obituaries]. Nature 150, 50 (1942). https://doi.org/10.1038/150050a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/150050a0