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He is remembered as the author of A Course of Modern Analysis (1902), which in its 1915 second edition in collaboration with George Neville Watson became Whittaker & Watson, one of the handful of mathematics texts of its era to become indispensable.
He is the eponym of the Whittaker function or Whittaker integral , in the theory of confluent hypergeometric function s. This makes him also the eponym of the Whittaker model in the local theory of automorphic representations. He published also on algebraic functionIn mathematics, an algebraic function of indeterminates X X . X is a function F that satisfies some non-trivial equation P ''F X X . X 0, with P a polynomial in n + 1 variables over a given field K''. That is, F is an implicit function that solves an alges and automorphic functions. He gave expressionAn expression combines numbers, operators, and/or variables. Expressions may be evaluated to values, and may be said to represent those values. The evaluation of an expression is dependent on the definition of the mathematical operators and system of valus for the Bessel functionIn mathematics, Bessel functions first defined by the Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernoulli and named after Friedrich Bessel, are canonical solutions y ''x of Bessel's differential equation: : for an arbitrary real number α (the order . The most comms as integralThis article deals with the concept of an integral in mathematical calculus. For other meanings of "integral" see integration. In calculus, the integral of a function is a generalization of area, mass, volume, sum, and total. Unlike the process of differes involving Legendre functions.
In the theory of partial differential equationIn mathematics, and in particular calculus, a partial differential equation PDE is an equation involving partial derivatives of an unknown function. The idea is to describe a function indirectly by a relation between itself and its partial derivatives, ras, Whittaker developed a general solution of the Laplace equation in three dimensions and the solution of the wave equation. He developed the electrical potential field as a bi- directional flow of energy (sometimes referred to as alternating currents). Whittaker's pair of papers in 1903 and 1904 indicated that any potential can be analyzed by a Fourier-like series of waves, such as a planet's gravitational field point-charge. The superpositions of inward and outward wave pairs produce the "static" fields (or scalar potential). These were harmonically-related. By this conception, the structure of electric potential is created from two opposite, though balanced, parts. Whittaker suggested that gravity possessed a wavelike " undulatory" character.
He wrote The Calculus of Observations: a treatise on numerical mathematics (1924) and Treatise on the Analytical Dynamics of Particles and Rigid Bodies: With an Introduction to the Problem of Three Bodies (1937). He was the editor of Eddington's Fundamental Theory (1946), and wrote From Euclid to Eddington, A Study of Conceptions of the External World (1949), including a first scholarly account of some of the research between 1900 to 1925. He wrote also A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity in two volumes.
He was educated at Manchester Grammar School and Trinity College, Cambridge from 1892]. He graduated as 1892]. He graduated as Second Wrangler in the examination in 1895. In 1896, Whittaker was elected as a fellow of Trinity College. He became professor at Edinburgh University in 1911, where he served out his academic career.
Whittaker was a Christian and became a convert to the Roman Catholic Church ( 1930). Whittaker was, in 1954, selected by the scientific Fellows of the Society to receive the Copley Medal award, the highest award granted by the Royal Society of London. Whittaker died in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The mathematician John Macnaughten Whittaker (1905-1984) was his son.
See also: Magnetogravity