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Wrangler (University of Cambridge) |
At the University of Cambridge, a Wrangler is a student who has completed the third year (called Part II) of the Mathematical Tripos with first-class honours. Until 1909, when the class list ceased to be published in rank order, the highest-scoring student was named the Senior Wrangler, the second highest-scoring student the Second Wrangler and so on. At the other end of the scale, the person who achieved the lowest exam marks, but still earned a third-class degree, was known as the wooden spoon.
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Senior Wranglers have included some of Britain's most brilliant mathematicians and scientists, including John Herschel, Arthur Cayley, George Gabriel Stokes, Lord Rayleigh and J. E. Littlewood. John Couch Adams scored so well that there was a greater gap between him and the Second Wrangler than between the Second Wrangler and the Wooden Spoon.citation needed
Interestingly, there are some equally if not more famous names associated with the rank of Second Wrangler (such as Alfred Marshall, James Clerk Maxwell, J. J. Thomson and Lord Kelvin). Legend has it that Kelvin was so confident that he had come top of the exam that he asked his servant to run to the Senate House and check who the second wrangler was. The servant returned and informed him, "You, sir"! It is also suggested that the final exam required the students to write a proof of a theorem which Kelvin himself had provided the proof for, earlier in the course; unfortunately, because he had created it, it hadn't occurred to him to learn it, and he spent a lot of time working it out from scratch - while the student who achieved Senior Wrangler put it down to having committed the proof to memory.citation needed
There has long been a culture of fierce competition at mathematics exams at Cambridge. However, it is certainly not true to say that top marks in the Cambridge mathematics exam guaranteed the Senior Wrangler success in life; the exams were largely a test of speed in applying familiar rules, and some of the most inventive and original students of Mathematics at Cambridge did not come top of their class (Bragg was 3rd, Hardy was 4th, Sedgwick 5th, Malthus was 9th and Keynes was 12th) and some fared even worse (Klaus Roth was not even a wrangler).
The first woman to top the mathematics list, albeit unofficially, was Philippa Fawcett, who took the exams in 1890. At the time, women were not officially ranked, although they were told how they had done compared to the male candidates, so she was ranked "above the Senior Wrangler".
The examination was the most important in England at the time, and the results were given great publicity. In 1865 Lord Rayleigh was Senior Wrangler, and The Times of 30 January 1865 printed a story asserting that he had not gained this distinction through favouritism as heir to a peerage.
In 1909, the order of merit was abolished and lists of students who had completed the mathematics exams were sorted alphabetically in each of the three classes of honours, and were not based on individual marks. The last official senior wrangler was P. J. Daniell, who graduated in 1909.
Students who achieve second-class and third-class mathematics degrees are known as Senior Optimes (second-class) and Junior Optimes (third-class). An example of a mathematician ranked as an Optime, but achieving success in his field is Luke Pebody. Cambridge did not divide its examination classification in mathematics into 2:1s and 2:2s until 1995 but now there are Senior Optimes Division 1 and Senior Optimes Division 2.citation needed
Information on the wranglers in the period 1860-1940 can be extracted from the BritMath database
Many of the wranglers who made careers in mathematics can be identified by searching on "wrangler" in
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