The Senior Wrangler is the top mathematics undergraduate at the University of Cambridge in England, a position which has been described as "the greatest intellectual achievement attainable in Britain".[1]
Specifically, it is the person who achieves the highest overall mark among the Wranglers – the students at Cambridge who gain first-class degrees in mathematics. The Cambridge undergraduate mathematics course, or Mathematical Tripos, is famously difficult.
Many Senior Wranglers have become world-leading figures in mathematics, physics, and other fields. They include George Airy, Jacob Bronowski, Christopher Budd, Kevin Buzzard, Arthur Cayley, Donald Coxeter, Arthur Eddington, Ben Green, John Herschel, James Inman, J. E. Littlewood, Lee Hsien Loong, Jayant Narlikar, Morris Pell, John Polkinghorne, Frank Ramsey, Lord Rayleigh (John Strutt), Sir George Stokes, Isaac Todhunter, Sir Gilbert Walker, and James H. Wilkinson.
Senior Wranglers were once fêted with torchlit processions and took pride of place in the university's graduation ceremony.[2] Years in Cambridge were often remembered by who had been Senior Wrangler that year.[1]
The annual ceremony in which the Senior Wrangler becomes known was first held in the 18th century. Standing on the balcony of the university's Senate House, the examiner reads out the class results for mathematics,[3] and printed copies of the results are then thrown to the audience below. The examiner no longer announces the students' exact rankings, but they still identify the Senior Wrangler, nowadays tipping their academic hat when reading out the person's name.
- ^ a b Forfar, David (1996). "What became of the Senior Wranglers?". Mathematical Spectrum. 29 (1).
- ^ Moore, Gregory (2005). "Masters of Theory and its Relevance to the History of Economic Thought". History of Economics Review. 42 (1): 77–99. doi:10.1080/18386318.2005.11681216. S2CID 148477456.
- ^ "Peter Guthrie Tait" (PDF).