Life

Frost was born at Kingston upon Hull

Kingston upon Hull

Kingston upon Hull , usually referred to as Hull, is a city and unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It stands on the River Hull at its junction with the Humber estuary, 25 miles inland from the North Sea. Hull has a resident population of...

 on 1 September 1817, the second son of Charles Frost. He was educated at Beverley and Oakham, and entered St. John's College, Cambridge, in October 1835, graduating B.A. as second wrangler in 1839 and M.A. in 1842. He was chosen first Smith prizeman in 1839, beating the senior wrangler, Benjamin Morgan Cowie

Benjamin Morgan Cowie

Benjamin Morgan Cowie was Dean of Manchester and then Exeter in the last quarter of the 19th Century. Born on 8 June 1816, he was educated at St John's College, Cambridge and graduated Senior Wrangler in 1839. Ordained in 1841 he was successively Tutor, Lecturer and Fellow at his old college...

, his fellow-collegian, and he was elected to a fellowship at St. John's College on 19 March. In 1841 he was ordained deacon, and in the same year vacated his fellowship by marriage. He held a mathematical lectureship in Jesus College

Jesus College, Cambridge

Jesus College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The College was founded in 1496 on the site of a Benedictine nunnery by John Alcock, then Bishop of Ely...

 from 1847 to 1859, and in King's College from 1859 to 1889; but his chief work consisted in the tuition of private pupils, among whom were Lord Justice Rigby, William Kingdon Clifford

William Kingdon Clifford

William Kingdon Clifford FRS was an English mathematician and philosopher. Building on the work of Hermann Grassmann, he introduced what is now termed geometric algebra, a special case of the Clifford algebra named in his honour, with interesting applications in contemporary mathematical physics...

, and Joseph Wolstenholme

Joseph Wolstenholme

Joseph Wolstenholme was an English mathematician.Wolstenholme was born in Eccles near Salford, Lancashire, England. He graduated from St John's College, Cambridge as Third Wrangler in 1850 and was elected a fellow of Christ's College in 1852...

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In 1854 Frost edited the first three sections of Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac Newton PRS was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived."...

's ‘Principia’ (Cambridge, 8vo). New editions were published in 1863, 1878, and 1883. In 1863 he prepared, in conjunction with Joseph Wolstenholme, ‘A Treatise on Solid Geometry,’ of which second and third editions, by Frost alone, appeared in 1875 and 1886. ‘Hints for the Solution of Problems in the Third Edition of “Solid Geometry”’ was published in 1887. In 1872 appeared his third work, ‘An Elementary Treatise on Curve Tracing.’ On 7 June 1883 Frost was admitted a fellow of the Royal Society

Royal Society

The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...

, and in the same year he was elected by King's College, Cambridge, to a fellowship, which he retained until his death. In 1883 Frost proceeded to the recently established degree of D.Sc.
Frost died at Cambridge on 5 June 1898, at his house in Fitzwilliam Street, and was buried on 10 June in the Mill Road cemetery

Mill Road Cemetery, Cambridge

Mill Road Cemetery is a cemetery off Mill Road in the Petersfield area of Cambridge, England. The cemetery is listed by English Heritage as a Grade II site, and several of the tombs are also listed as of special architectural and historical interest....

. He was a man of wide interests and varied attainments, an accomplished pianoforte player, and a successful painter in water-colours. On 2 June 1841 he was married at Finchley to Jennett Louisa, daughter of Richard Dixon of Oak Lodge, Finchley.

Besides the works already mentioned, Frost was the author of numerous papers in the Cambridge Mathematical Journal, the Oxford and Cambridge Journal of Mathematics, and the Quarterly Journal of Mathematics

Quarterly Journal of Mathematics

The Quarterly Journal of Mathematics is a mathematics journal formed in 1930 from the merger of The Quarterly Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics and the Messenger of Mathematics. According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2009 impact factor of 0.656, ranking it 117th out of...

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