Senior Wrangler is the First position in the Math Tripos in Cambridge. Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was the Senior Wrangler in 1973, the first Singaporean student with such great honors, among other senior wranglers like Arthur Cayley (Group Theory), J.J. Sylvester (Inventor of Matrix, private tuitor of the “inventor of Nursing” Florence Nightingale), J.E. Littlewood (partnered in a twin research team with G.H. Hardy), Frank Ramsey (Ramsey’s Theorem), Stokes, Pell, etc.

Some great mathematicians like Bertrand Russell (Logician, Nobel Litterature Prize) , G.H. Hardy (20th century greatest Pure Mathematician, mentored 2 geniuses: Indian Ramanujian and Chinese Hua Luogeng 华罗庚*) were not Senior Wrangler. Prof Hardy hated Math Tripos syllabus (revealed in his autobiography: “A Mathematician’s Apology“).

1914 Brian Charles Molony

1923 Frank Ramsey

1928 Donald Coxeter

1930 Jacob Bronowski

1939 James Wilkinson

1940 Hermann Bondi

1952 John Polkinghorne

1953 Crispin Nash-Williams

1959 Jayant Narlikar

1970 Derek Wanless

1973 Lee Hsien Loong (Singapore 3rd Prime Minister)

1977 Glyn Moody

1982 Christopher Budd

1985 Nick Mee

1990 Kevin Buzzard

1992 Ruth Hendry

1993 Ian Dowker

1996 David W. Essex

1997 Alexander Barnar

1998 Ben Joseph Green

1999 Paul Russell

2000 Toby Gee

2001 Mohan Ganesalingam

2002 Jeremy Young

2003 Thomas Barnet-Lamb

2004 David Loeffler

2005 Timothy Austin

2007 Paul Jefferys

2008 Le Hung Viet Bao

2009 Thomas Beck

2010 Zihan Hans Liu

2011 Sean Eberhard

2012 Sean Moss

2013 Arran Fernandez (@18 years old 0 month)

Note * :

Hua Luogeng, like Ramanujian, was a self-paced study mathematician, with only secondary education. Hardy took Hua as research student, let Hua choose either spend 3 years in Cambridge to get a PhD working on one Math topic, or learn everything from Hardy but no PhD degree. Hua chose the “no PhD degree” option but got to become the greatest Mathematician in modern China. Later in 1980s Hua and his students reformed the Chinese Secondary School Math education, endorsed by Deng Xiaoping, propelled China to the World’s Championship of Math Olympiad for nearly 2 decades, ahead of Russia, USA, UK and Europe.