In the history of mathematics, Wesley Stoker Barker Woolhouse is one of the names that keeps returning.
The record lists Wesley Stoker Barker Woolhouse as British actuary (1809–1893).
Wesley Stoker Barker Woolhouse was born at North Shields in 1809. His recorded nationality is United Kingdom.
The nineteenth century made mathematics rigorous: definitions were tightened, foundations questioned, and whole fields created from scratch.
Mathematical work is judged by whether anyone can build on it, and that judgement takes decades.
That the work was done from United Kingdom matters: mathematical training, institutions and the language of publication have never been evenly distributed.
Wesley Stoker Barker Woolhouse died in 1893, aged 84. The proofs remain, and a proof does not decay - which is the particular permanence mathematics offers.
