Edmund Taylor Whittaker was born at Birkdale, Lancashire, on 24th October 1873 and belonged to a family which had been known for several generations in the district where the Rabble forms the boundary between Lancashire and Yorkshire. He entered Manchester Grammar School in 1885 and spent two years in the Classical side before turning over to the Mathematical side. In December 1891 he won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, and, after an undergraduate career of unusual distinction, was bracketed with J. H. Grace as Second Wrangler in the Tripos of 1895 ; Bromwich was Senior Wrangler. In 1896 Whittaker was elected a Fellow of Trinity College and in 1897 was first Smith's prizeman, his essay being entitled “On the reduction of the theory of multiform functions to uniform functions.”