William Whewell FRS FGS FRSE (/ˈhjuːəl/ HEW-əl; 24 May 1794 – 6 March 1866) was an English polymath, scientist, Anglican priest, philosopher, theologian, and historian of science.

In a time of increasing specialization, Whewell belonged in an earlier era when natural philosophers investigated widely.

He also organized thousands of volunteers internationally to study ocean tides, in what is now considered one of the first citizen science projects.

His father died in 1816, the year Whewell received his bachelor degree at Trinity College, but before his most significant professional accomplishments.

Under Whewell, analytic topics such as elliptical integrals were replaced by physical studies of electricity, heat and magnetism.

A window dedicated to Lady Affleck, his second wife, was installed in her memory in the chancel of All Saints' Church, Cambridge and made by Morris & Co. A list of his writings was prepared after his death by Isaac Todhunter in two volumes, the first being an index of the names of persons with whom Whewell corresponded.

In 1826 and 1828, Whewell was engaged with George Airy in conducting experiments in Dolcoath mine in Cornwall, in order to determine the density of the earth.

John Lubbock, a former student of Whewell's, had analysed the available historic data (covering up to 25 years) for several ports to allow tables to be generated on a theoretical basis, publishing the methodology.

[18][19] This work was supported by Francis Beaufort, Hydrographer of the Navy, and contributed to the publication of the Admiralty Tide Tables starting in 1833.

This required extensive new observations, initially obtained through an informal network, and later through formal projects enabled by Beaufort at the Admiralty.

In the first of these, in June 1834, every Coast Guard station in the United Kingdom recorded the tides every fifteen minutes for two weeks.

[21]: 169–173  The second, in June 1835, was an international collaboration, involving Admiralty Surveyors, other Royal Navy and British observers, as well as those from the United States, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands.

[21]: 175–182 Whewell made extensive use of graphical methods, and these became not just ways of displaying results, but tools in the analysis of data.

This involved anchoring his ship, HMS Fairy, and taking repeated soundings at the same location with lead and line, precautions being needed to allow for irregularities in the sea bed, and the effects of tidal flow.

[12] In Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences Whewell was the first to use the term "consilience" to discuss the unification of knowledge between the different branches of learning.

Whewell explicitly rejects the hypothetico-deductive claim that hypotheses discovered by non-rational guesswork can be confirmed by consequentialist testing.

His first work, An Elementary Treatise on Mechanics (1819), cooperated with those of George Peacock and John Herschel in reforming the Cambridge method of mathematical teaching.

His work and publications also helped influence the recognition of the moral and natural sciences as an integral part of the Cambridge curriculum.

He stood against the scheme of entrusting elections to the members of the senate and instead, advocated the use of college funds and the subvention of scientific and professorial work.

In this work, Whewell established a strict nomenclature for German Gothic churches and came up with a theory of stylistic development.

"[37] In the 1857 novel Barchester Towers Charlotte Stanhope uses the topic of the theological arguments, concerning the possibility of intelligent life on other planets, between Whewell and David Brewster in an attempt to start up a conversation between her impecunious brother and the wealthy young widow Eleanor Bold.