John Macnaghten Whittaker FRS[1][2] FRSE LLD (7 March 1905 – 29 January 1984) was a British mathematician and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield from 1953 to 1965.
[4] He was awarded a doctorate (DSc) in 1929, followed by a fellowship at Pembroke College, Cambridge, before becoming a professor of pure mathematics at Liverpool University in 1933.
During the Second World War he served with the Royal Artillery including time in the 8th Army on Field-Marshal Montgomery's staff in Egypt and Tunisia 1942/43.
In 1948 he won the Adams Prize, jointly with John Charles Burkill, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, and Walter Hayman.
In 1949 J. M. Whittaker was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, an honour already held by his father – they were the only parent and child to have this simultaneously.