Wrangler
Encyclopedia
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, a 'Wrangler' is a student who gains first-class honours in the third year of the University's undergraduate degree in mathematics. The highest-scoring student is the Senior Wrangler, the second highest is the Second Wrangler, and so on. At the other end of the scale, the person who achieves the lowest exam marks, but still earns a third-class degree, is known as the wooden spoon
Wooden spoon (award)
A wooden spoon is a mock or real award, usually given to an individual or team which has come last in a competition, but sometimes also to runners-up. Examples range from the academic to sporting and more frivolous events...
.
Until 1909, the University made the rankings public. Since 1910 it has publicly revealed only the class of degree gained by each student. An examiner reveals the identity of the Senior Wrangler 'unofficially' by tipping his hat when reading out the person's name, but other rankings are communicated to each student privately. Therefore the names of only some 20th-century Senior Wranglers (such as Jacob Bronowski
Jacob Bronowski
Jacob Bronowski was a Polish-Jewish British mathematician, biologist, historian of science, theatre author, poet and inventor...
and Ben J. Green) have become publicly known.
Obtaining the position of a highly ranked Wrangler created many opportunities for the individual's subsequent profession. They would often become Fellow
Fellow
A fellow in the broadest sense is someone who is an equal or a comrade. The term fellow is also used to describe a person, particularly by those in the upper social classes. It is most often used in an academic context: a fellow is often part of an elite group of learned people who are awarded...
s initially, before moving on to other professions, such as law, the Church, or medicine. Throughout the United Kingdom and the British Empire, university mathematics professors were often among the top three Wranglers.
The order of Wranglers was widely publicised and shaped the public perception of mathematics as being the most intellectually challenging of all subjects. According to Andrew Warwick, author of Masters of Theory, the term 'Senior Wrangler' became "synonymous with academic supremacy".
Past wranglers
Top marks in the Cambridge mathematics exam did not always guarantee 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. BraggWilliam Henry Bragg
Sir William Henry Bragg OM, KBE, PRS was a British physicist, chemist, mathematician and active sportsman who uniquely shared a Nobel Prize with his son William Lawrence Bragg - the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics...
was third, Hardy
G. H. Hardy
Godfrey Harold “G. H.” Hardy FRS was a prominent English mathematician, known for his achievements in number theory and mathematical analysis....
was fourth, Sedgwick
Adam Sedgwick
Adam Sedgwick was one of the founders of modern geology. He proposed the Devonian period of the geological timescale...
fifth, Malthus was ninth, Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
was seventh, Keynes
John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes, Baron Keynes of Tilton, CB FBA , was a British economist whose ideas have profoundly affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics, as well as the economic policies of governments...
was 12th, and some fared even worse: Klaus Roth
Klaus Roth
Klaus Friedrich Roth is a British mathematician known for work on diophantine approximation, the large sieve, and irregularities of distribution. He was born in Breslau, Prussia, but raised and educated in the UK. He graduated from Peterhouse, Cambridge in 1945...
was not even a wrangler. The present Astronomer Royal
Astronomer Royal
Astronomer Royal is a senior post in the Royal Household of the Sovereign of the United Kingdom. There are two officers, the senior being the Astronomer Royal dating from 22 June 1675; the second is the Astronomer Royal for Scotland dating from 1834....
, Martin Rees, a wrangler, would go on to become one of the world's leading scientists, while also holding the posts of Master of Trinity College (Cambridge) and President of the Royal Society.
The first woman to top the mathematics list was Philippa Fawcett
Philippa Fawcett
Philippa Garrett Fawcett was an English mathematician and educationalist.She was the daughter of the suffragist Millicent Fawcett and of Henry Fawcett MP, Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge and Postmaster General in Gladstone's government...
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".
Optimes
Students who achieve second-class and third-class mathematics degrees are known as Senior Optimes (second-class) and Junior Optimes (third-class). Cambridge did not divide its examination classificationBritish undergraduate degree classification
The British undergraduate degree classification system is a grading scheme for undergraduate degrees in the United Kingdom...
in mathematics into 2:1s and 2:2s until 1985 but now there are Senior Optimes Division 1 and Senior Optimes Division 2.
In popular culture
- 'The Senior Wrangler' is a member of the faculty of Unseen UniversityUnseen UniversityThe Unseen University is a school of wizardry in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series of fantasy novels. Located in the city of Ankh-Morpork, the UU is staffed by a faculty composed of mostly indolent and inept old wizards. The university's name is a pun on the Invisible College...
in Terry PratchettTerry PratchettSir Terence David John "Terry" Pratchett, OBE is an English novelist, known for his frequently comical work in the fantasy genre. He is best known for his popular and long-running Discworld series of comic fantasy novels...
's DiscworldDiscworldDiscworld is a comic fantasy book series by English author Sir Terry Pratchett, set on the Discworld, a flat world balanced on the backs of four elephants which, in turn, stand on the back of a giant turtle, Great A'Tuin. The books frequently parody, or at least take inspiration from, J. R. R....
series of novelNovelA novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
s - The character of Roger Hamley in Elizabeth GaskellElizabeth GaskellElizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, née Stevenson , often referred to simply as Mrs Gaskell, was a British novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era...
's Wives and Daughters has achieved the rank of Senior Wrangler at Cambridge. - Vivie Warren, the headstrong heroine of George Bernard Shaw's Mrs. Warren's ProfessionMrs. Warren's ProfessionMrs Warren's Profession is a play written by George Bernard Shaw in 1893. The story centers on the relationship between Mrs Kitty Warren, a brothel owner, described by the author as "on the whole, a genial and fairly presentable old blackguard of a woman" and her daughter, Vivie...
(1893) and daughter of the play's infamous madam, tied with the Third Wrangler, settling for that place because she recognized that "it was not worth [her] while to face the grind" because she did not intend an academic career for herself - 'Wrangler' is a jargonJargonJargon is terminology which is especially defined in relationship to a specific activity, profession, group, or event. The philosophe Condillac observed in 1782 that "Every science requires a special language because every science has its own ideas." As a rationalist member of the Enlightenment he...
term applied to codebreakerCodebreakerCodebreaker may refer to:*A person who performs cryptanalysis*The Codebreakers, a 1967 book on history of cryptography by David Kahn*Codebreaker , a 1981 puzzle-based computer game, originally released for the Atari 2600...
s in some of John Le CarreJohn le CarréDavid John Moore Cornwell , who writes under the name John le Carré, is an author of espionage novels. During the 1950s and the 1960s, Cornwell worked for MI5 and MI6, and began writing novels under the pseudonym "John le Carré"...
's spySPYSPY is a three-letter acronym that may refer to:* SPY , ticker symbol for Standard & Poor's Depositary Receipts* SPY , a satirical monthly, trademarked all-caps* SPY , airport code for San Pédro, Côte d'Ivoire...
novels, such as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
External links
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: