[3][4][5] Born in Strood, England, he won a Foundation Scholarship to Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School in Rochester.

Later, Wilkinson's interests took him into the numerical analysis field, where he discovered many significant algorithms.

Wilkinson received the Turing Award in 1970 "for his research in numerical analysis to facilitate the use of the high-speed digital computer, having received special recognition for his work in computations in linear algebra and 'backward' error analysis."

In the same year, he also gave the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) John von Neumann Lecture.

In 1987, Wilkinson won the Chauvenet Prize of the Mathematical Association of America, for his paper "The Perfidious Polynomial".