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LMBC coach during the 1970s and 1990s, and co-author of 'The Bumps: An Account of the Cambridge University Bumping Races, 1827-1999' (2000).

Sir Donald Macalister was born in Perth, Scotland, on the 17th May 1854, the son of another Donald Macalister. He was educated in Scotland for the first few years of his life, and then in Liverpool, before being admitted to St John’s College, Cambridge in 1874. He had won a scholarship from St John’s, but also from Balliol, Worchester, and Oxford. He was Senior Wrangler and a Smith’s prizeman in 1877, and was immediately elected as a fellow of the college.

Sir John Douglas Cockcroft was a physicist and engineer. He was born on 27 May 1897 in Langfield, Yorkshire, to John Arthur Cockcroft and Annie Maude Fielden.
Cockcroft was educated at Todmorden secondary school from 1909 and he went with a scholarship to the University of Manchester in 1914 to study mathematics. He volunteered for war service in 1915 and spent three years as a signaller in the Royal Field Artillery. He returned to Manchester in 1919 to the College of Technology, where he gained a first-class BScTechn. in 1920. He was then accepted as a college apprentice in engineering by the Metropolitan-Vickers Company. He then won a scholarship at St John's College to read mathematics.
In 1925 Cockcroft married (Eunice) Elizabeth Crabtree whom he had known since childhood. Their first child, a boy, died at two years. Subsequently they had four daughters and then a son.
Cockcroft was recommended to Edward Rutherford at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, and he was accepted as a research student supported by a foundation scholarship from St John's College, a state scholarship, and a further grant from Vickers. He gained his PhD in 1928. At Rutherford’s request, Cockcroft joined up with E.T.S. Watson. In April 1932 their proton beam was directed on to a lithium target and bright scintillations were observed. They were shown to be due to helium atoms. By developing a high voltage high energy beam, the atom had been disintegrated, transformed, and the whole scientific world realized that a new era of nuclear physics had arrived.
Outside of his laboratory work, in 1933 Cockcroft had been appointed junior bursar of St John's College responsible for the buildings, some of which had been neglected for years. The gatehouse of the college was partly taken down to replace roof damage and destruction by death-watch beetles; two new courts were built and rewiring done. In 1935 Cockcroft took over direction of the Mond Laboratory; a new wing of the Cavendish Laboratory. In 1936 Cockcroft was elected FRS, and in 1939 he was elected to the Jacksonian professorship in natural philosophy just as he was becoming increasingly involved with efforts being made in technical fields to prepare for war with Hitler's Germany.
Sir H. T. Tizard spoke confidentially to Cockcroft early in 1938 about RDF, the highly secret radio technique for finding aircraft. Cockcroft played a major role in persuading about eighty physicists to spend a month at various coastal radar defence stations, and he also persuaded a number of leading physicists to participate in the RDF project. Some of these scientists made major advances in radar and Cockcroft's part was one of his greatest contributions to the war effort.
Cockcroft became chief superintendent of the Air Defence Research and Development Establishment at Christchurch in late 1940. Radar was then being applied to direct anti-aircraft gunnery upon unseen targets. Coastal defence radar and radar for combat use by the army to detect moving vehicles and tanks in the darkness were other major projects he undertook.
Cockcroft was assigned to Canada in 1944 to take charge of the Montreal laboratory, and then to build the NRX heavy water reactor at Chalk River. His calm but energetic direction gave the laboratory a firm sense of purpose. The nuclear explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought the war to an abrupt end, but the nuclear work continued. The Canadians wanted Cockcroft to stay but he was wanted at home to direct the new establishment which was being built at Harwell for atomic energy research. Cockcroft commuted for a while and did both jobs but he then moved full-time to Harwell in 1946.
Cockcroft's name and the excitement of atomic energy attracted many able people of all ages to work at Harwell. Work on pressurized gas-cooled reactors made it possible in 1953 to base the production of additional plutonium on dual-purpose reactors to be built at Calder Hall. The justification was primarily military, but for the first time the vision of cheap nuclear power began to have a practical endorsement. The government decided in 1954 to take the responsibility for atomic energy from the Ministry of Supply and create the Atomic Energy Authority (AEA). Cockcroft became the first member for research, while also remaining director of Harwell.
In December 1954 a technical conference was held under the auspices of the United Nations on the peaceful uses of atomic energy. An advisory committee from seven countries was formed and Cockcroft was chosen as the British representative. This conference, held at Geneva in August 1955, was a political event of outstanding importance which might have heralded the end of the cold war. Scientists from the communist countries fraternized so easily with those from the west, that, just as they shared science, they thought there must be a way to share political philosophies. Scientifically it was an enormous success. Cockcroft was able to invite I. Kurchatov, of the USSR, to give a lecture at Harwell on a subject (fusion research) which only a few months earlier was regarded as extremely secret.
Cockcroft gathered much of the British work on fusion research at Harwell and the major project was the torroidal discharge machine called ZETA which was a major step forward in fusion research. Cockcroft was able to give a great deal of help and encouragement to the Medical Research Council in their work on radiological protection. His influence led to the creation of the Rutherford High Energy Laboratory. He was also closely concerned with the early years of CERN.
Cockcroft resigned as a full-time member of the AEA in 1959 but remained a part-time member and moved to Cambridge to become the first master of the new Churchill College, having been nominated by Sir Winston Churchill himself. Cambridge had accepted the offer of finance for a college which would have nearly as many advanced scientists and fellows as undergraduates, all living in college. Churchill was gratified that this college would bear his name, and Cockcroft was about the most famous scientist or engineer in Britain at that time.
Alongside his duties as Master of Churchill College, Cockcroft represented Britain in the conference which in due course led to the signing of the test ban treaty relating to atomic weapons. He supported the Pugwash conferences on science and world affairs, and was their president in 1967.
Cockcroft received many honorary degrees, awards, and honours, the three principal being the Order of Merit (1957), the Nobel prize for physics, jointly with E. T. S. Walton (1951), and the atoms for peace award (1961). He was appointed CBE in 1944, knight bachelor in 1948, and KCB in 1953. Cockcroft wrote few scientific papers, but from 1935 devoted his outstanding ability to organizing and administering research in science and technology. Cockcroft died on 18 September 1967 at Churchill College. On 17 October a service of memorial and thanksgiving was held in Westminster Abbey.

Professor Revd. Alfred Caldecott was born in Chester on 9 November 1850. His father, John Caldecott was a hatter and founder of the Institute of Accountants. Caldecott was his sixth child by his first wife Mary Dinah (née Brookes). His older brother Randolph was an English artist and illustrator. In 1860 the family moved to Boughton, Cheshire and he spent the last five years of his schooling at The King Henry VIII School in Chester. He then attended St. John’s College, Cambridge, matriculating in 1876. He read the Moral Sciences Tripos and he took First Class honours in 1880. He was then elected to a Fellowship at St John's. He was one of the founders of the Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club and the first meeting took place on 19 October 1878 in his rooms at St John's.
Caldecott joined King's College London in 1891 as Professor of Logic, Mental and Moral Philosophy. He developed a syllabus with a renewed emphasis on theological issues. He was a lecturer of Logic, Ethics and Psychology to the King’s College London Ladies Department. He became the Boyle Lecturer in 1913 and was Dean of King's College from 1913–17.
In his religious life Caldecott took Holy Orders and became the curate of Stafford from 1880-82, then he was Vicar of Horningsea, Cambridgeshire from 1883-84. He was the Select Preacher at Cambridge University for many individual years between 1884 and 1916. He was the Rector of North and South Topham in Norfolk from 1895-1898 and then the Rector of Frating with Thorington in Essex from 1898-1906. He became Prebendary of St Paul's from 1915 to 1935 and the Rector of Great Oakley in Essex from 1917-1925.
Caldecott was a regular contributor to 'Cambridge Theological Essays' and to the 'University of London Theological Essays'. He wrote several books on philosophical, historical and religious subjects including: 'English Colonialism and the Empire' (1891), ‘The Church in the West Indies’ (1898) and 'The Philosophy of Religion in England and America' (1901). He contributed a paper in 1908 to the Pan-Anglican Congress on Christian Philosophy in contrast with Pantheism, Christian Science, and Agnosticism. He also collaborated with his brother Randolph on the book 'Aesop's Fables' (1883) which contained his translation of Aesop from the original Greek.
In 1910 he made up a deputation with Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Louisa Garrett Anderson who were allowed to put forward the case, for women to have the vote, to the Prime Minister.
He died on 8 February 1936, aged 85, in Upton-upon-Severn in Worcestershire. A portrait of Alfred painted by his brother Randolph Caldecott hangs in the Liverpool Academy of Arts.

Head Porter, 1936(?)-1952

Dr. Sandra Billington was born on 10th September 1943. After working in theatre including gaining a scholarship to RADA and working with Mike Leigh, she attended Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. There, she became fascinated by folklore, theatre and disorder in the Middle Ages. She was Lecturer and Reader in Renaissance Theatre at the University of Glasgow from 1979 to 2003, a specialist in Shakespeare and folklore. She was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh from 1998 to 2005.
Her books include ‘Mock Kings in Medieval Society and Renaissance Drama’ (1991), ‘Midsummer: A cultural sub-text from Chretien de Troyes to Jean Michel’ (2001), and ‘Coming up for the third time’ (2011). She also edited ‘The Concept of the Goddess’ with Miranda Aldhouse-Green in 1986. Her book ‘A Social History of the Fool’ won the Folklore Society's Katharine Briggs Folklore Award in 1984. She also wrote an article on 16th Century Drama in St. John’s College, Cambridge which was published in February 1978 in the ‘Review of English Studies’ Vol. XXIX, Issue 113.

Sir Richard John Pearson Aikens was born on 28 August 1948. He is a retired British judge, who was a Lord Justice of Appeal from 2008 to 2015. He was educated at Norwich School from 1960 – 1967 and then at St. John's College Cambridge from1967 - 70 and 1971 – 2, graduating with an MA in History and Law.
He was called to the Bar by Middle Temple in 1973 and received the Harmsworth Scholarship in 1974. Aikens joined what is now Brick Court Chambers in 1974 and practised in commercial law, specialising in shipping, insurance and re-insurance, banking, international trade and arbitration. He was appointed QC in 1986 and his commercial practice thereafter widened to include telecommunications, oil and gas and professional negligence.
He was a Recorder of the Crown Court from 1993-1999 and, before his appointment to the High Court Queen’s bench in 1999, he was in demand as an arbitrator in shipping and insurance disputes. He was a judge of the Commercial and Admiralty Courts from 1999-2008 and was in charge of the Commercial Court in 2005-6. In November 2008 Aikens became a Lord Justice of Appeal and he was appointed to the Privy Council that same year. In the High Court and Court of Appeal he sat on a very wide range of cases. He conducted cases/arbitrations and advised in foreign jurisdictions, in particular Hong Kong, Singapore, Gibraltar, Bermuda, Australia, the USA, France and Switzerland. In the commercial sphere he gave judgments in all areas, including Republic of Ecuador v Occidental Exploration and Production Company, which was the first case in the English courts concerning Bilateral Investment Treaties and whether awards made under them were justiciable in court. He also gave judgments in many aspects of civil law, EU/competition law and public law (especially extradition). He conducted criminal trials and appeals in a wide variety of cases from murder to official secrets and fraud. He retired as a Lord Justice of Appeal on 2 November 2015. After retirement as a judge, Aikens rejoined Brick Court Chambers as a door tenant.
Aikens is one of the authors of "Bills of Landing", and has written many articles on legal topics, particularly on conflicts of laws. He is a contributing editor to Bullen & Leake & Jacobs “Predecents of Pleading”. He also contributed to “Tom Bingham and the Transformation of the Law: a liber amicorum” and “Reforming Marine and Commercial Insurance Law". He is the joint editor with Kenneth Richardson of “Law and Society: which is to be Master”.
Aikens lectured regularly (in English and French) and chaired conferences throughout his judicial career. Whilst at the bar he was a director and chairman of the Bar Mutual Indemnity Fund (the Bar’s professional negligence insurers), which he helped to found in 1985. In 2012-14 he was President of the British Insurance Law Association. He taught commercial law at King’s College, University of London from 2016 and is a Visiting Professor at both King's College and Queen Mary University of London.
Aikens was a Governor of Sedbergh School from 1988-1997. He was a director of English National Opera from 1995-2004. He is currently chairman of the Temple Music Foundation (since 2002), which promotes music in the Temple. He was also President of the British Insurance Law Association from 2012-14. He is married with 2 sons and 2 step daughters.

Douglas Noël Adams was born on 11 March 1952 in Cambridge. He was the son of Christopher Douglas Adams and his wife, Janet Dora Sydney, née Donovan. By the time Adams was five his parents were separated, and then divorced. Janet Adams and the children then moved to her parents' house in Brentwood, Essex. In 1960 Christopher Adams remarried Mary Judith Stewart, née Robertson who paid for Douglas and Susan Adams to be educated at private schools. In 1964 Adams's mother married Ron Thrift, a vet whose work took them to Dorset. Their children, Jane and James, were half-siblings to Douglas, whose teenage years were spent moving between different branches of his family.
Adams was educated at Middleton Hall from 1959, the preparatory school for Brentwood School. He became a boarder at Brentwood in September 1964. He was then awarded a place at St John's College, Cambridge, to read English, entering in 1971. At Cambridge Adams spent much of his time writing sketches for student revues with his friends Will Adams and Martin Smith. He eventually became one of the principal writers for Footlights, the university's theatrical club.
After graduating from St John's in 1974 with a 2:2, Adams lived in a series of London flats with friends from his time at Cambridge. He was determined to write sketches, but his attempts to get material commissioned for radio did not go well. The BBC took the occasional sketch, but Adams's fantastical style was unsuitable for the punchy, topical material then in demand. Adams gained exposure at the Edinburgh fringe festival in August 1976, when he wrote for and performed in a successful revue, 'The Unpleasantness at Brodie's Close', but by the end of the year his career had stalled. Intensely depressed, he retreated to his family in Dorset, making only occasional trips up to London.
On one of these visits to London, on 4 February 1977, Adams had lunch with Simon Brett, a producer at BBC radio, who indicated that he would be willing to commission a comic science fiction series which became 'The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy'. With encouragement from his family and his friend Jon Canter, Adams returned to London where he and Canter shared a flat off the Holloway Road. Shortly afterwards he was also commissioned by BBC television to write a four-part serial for the long-running science fiction series, 'Doctor Who'.
The creation of the six Hitch-Hiker scripts was difficult and John Lloyd was drafted in to help with episodes five and six. On 8 March 1978 the first episode of 'The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy' was broadcast at 10.30 p.m. on BBC Radio 4. Nothing like it had ever been heard before; its freshness was shocking. Unusually for radio, the series was reviewed by the Oberver as 'possibly the most original radio comedy for years' The audience grew exponentially from episode to episode. Adams was offered a post as a producer in BBC radio's light entertainment department, which he held between May and October 1978. Adams then wrote a Christmas special and a second series of 'The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy'. The first of many stage versions was produced in May 1979 by Ken Campbell and the Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London.
The rights to a novel based on the series were sold to Pan Books, then the leading mass-market paperback house. The book, adapted from the first four episodes, was published in October 1979 and was an instant bestseller, winning a Golden Pan award for selling a million copies faster than any other title in Pan's history. Writing the book conspired with the pressure of work as script editor of 'Doctor Who' (a post which Adams held throughout 1979) to delay the production of the second series of 'The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy', which was eventually broadcast in five parts on Radio 4 in January 1980. A second book, 'The Restaurant at the End of the Universe', followed at the end of 1980 and was also a bestseller. Adams meanwhile adapted 'The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy' for BBC television, with Alan J. W. Bell as producer and director. It was broadcast in six episodes in January and February 1981.
Adams' wit made him much in demand on the promotion circuit, and he was one of the first to see how radically information technology would change the world. He was especially passionate about the virtues of the Apple Macintosh over the IBM-derived PC. In 1981 he met Jane Elizabeth Belson. They lived together and eventually married on 25 November 1991. Polly Jane Rocket Adams, their daughter, was born on 22 June 1994.
Adams continued to produce books all through the 1980s. 'Life, the Universe and Everything', the third Hitch-Hiker novel, was published in 1982. 'The Meaning of Liff', a mock dictionary of humorous definitions co-written with John Lloyd, followed in 1983. 'So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish', a fourth Hitch-Hiker novel, appeared in 1984. He then broke away from the constraints of the Hitch-Hiker format with 'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency' (1987) and 'The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul' (1988). The year 1990 saw another collaboration with Lloyd, 'The Deeper Meaning of Liff' and the same year saw another collaboration with the zoologist Mark Carwardine which resulted in a book about endangered species, 'Last Chance to See'. This was Adams's favourite among his own works.
The 1990s saw Adams produce fewer new books but he managed to produce a fifth Hitch-Hiker novel, 'Mostly Harmless', in 1992. However, he was in great demand on the American university and corporate lecture circuit, being an amusing and prescient thinker and speaker on the impact of the personal computer. He was also committed to making the film of 'The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy' and he and his family spent much of the decade trying to source funding for the project in Hollywood, California, and they settled in Santa Barbara, in 1999.
Adams was writing another book 'The Salmon of Doubt', when he died of a heart attack in Montecito, California, on 11 May 2001. Adams's remains were cremated and later interred in Highgate cemetery, London, in June 2002. In that year, ten chapters of his uncompleted last novel were published with other articles and stories under the title 'The Salmon of Doubt'. Adams's creativity survived him; his ideas are still cited as inspirations by thinkers in both the arts and sciences, and new iterations of his work continue to appear. A film of 'The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy' was released in 2005, while the BBC broadcast a third, fourth, and fifth series, adapted by Dirk Maggs from 'Life, the Universe and Everything', on Radio 4 in 2004–5.

Member of Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge; Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge, 1979-1989

George Fiddes Watt was a portrait painter and engraver. He was born in Aberdeen on 15 February 1873, the only son and the eldest of the five children of George Watt and his wife, Jean Frost. On leaving school at fourteen, he was apprenticed to a firm of lithographic printers in Aberdeen. During these next seven years he also attended evening classes at Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen.
At the age of twenty-one Watt went to Edinburgh to study in the life class of the Royal Scottish Academy. For a time he struggled to make ends meet, but through exhibiting his paintings at the academy from 1897 he soon obtained small commissions, particularly for portraits of local dignitaries such as Provost Smith of Peterhead (1901) and Provost Wallace of Tain (1908). When commissions continued to come in steadily, he began renting a large studio at 178 Cromwell Road and exhibiting at the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters.
In 1903 Watt married Jean Willox, art teacher at Peterhead Academy, and youngest daughter of William Willox of Park, a farmer in the Buchan area of Aberdeenshire. They had three sons and a daughter.
He first began to attract attention with a number of portraits of women, including one of his wife which was his first exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1906. A portrait of his mother painted in 1910 was later bought out of the Chantrey bequest for the Tate Gallery in 1930.
Watt's later reputation, however, rests on his portraits of men. He was interested in strong character, expressed with vigour and freedom of handling. His most vital works probably date from before the First World War and he is seen at his best, for example, in the series of senior legal figures at the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh: Lord Salvesen (1911), Lord Kingsburgh (1912), and Lord Dundas (1916).
Watt's work is regarded as being in the Scottish tradition stemming from Henry Raeburn, with its unaffected simplicity and robust directness of handling. He was much in demand in both Scotland and England for official portraits and painted, among others, Herbert Henry Asquith and Lord Loreburn (both 1912) for Balliol College, Oxford; Cosmo Gordon Lang (1914) for All Souls, Oxford; Arthur James Balfour (1919) for Eton College; Lord Ullswater (1922) for the House of Commons; Sir Joseph Thomson (1923) for Trinity College, Cambridge and Robert Forsyth Scott (1913) for St. John’s College, Cambridge.
After 1930 he ceased exhibiting at the Royal Academy and painted less and less as his eyesight had started to fail. He had been elected an associate (1910) and a full member (1924) of the Royal Scottish Academy and his last exhibit there was in 1941.
In 1940, when the bombing of London became severe, Watt retired to Cults, near Aberdeen. In 1955 the University of Aberdeen awarded him the honorary degree of LLD and late in life he was granted a civil-list pension. His wife died in 1956 and her death was a severe blow to him. In his later years, he became a well-known figure in Aberdeen, with his Vandyke beard, wearing a deer stalking cap, and carrying a long shepherd's crook. Fiddes Watt died at his home in Aberdeen, on 22 November 1960. His work is represented in most Scottish collections, including the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, which has four paintings. A bronze statue of Watt by Thomas Bayliss Huxley-Jones, made in 1942, is in Aberdeen.

Francis Puryer White was born in London on 26th October 1893. He was the son of John Francis White, a schoolmaster. He was educated at Stanley Higher Elementary School and then at Owen’s School both in North London. He then entered St. John’s College as a student of mathematics in 1912, gaining a first class in part I of the Mathematics tripos in 1913 and again in Part II in 1915. He was elected in 1916 to the Isaac Newton Studentship in Astronomy and Optical Physics. There followed a short period of war service, from which he returned to St. John’s in 1919, where he was elected a Fellow. He remained a Fellow of St. John’s for the rest of his life. He was appointed a College Lecturer in 1920 and a University Lecturer in 1926 and remained a member of the mathematical teaching staff until he retired in 1961. He was Director of Studies in Mathematics, from 1945 until 1959.
When White returned to Cambridge in 1919 he came increasingly under the influence of H. F. Baker, then Lowndean Professor of Astronomy and Geometry. Baker’s real interest was in geometry, and his influence was a primary factor in causing White to devote his energies to geometry rather than astronomy. From 1922 to 1930 White wrote a series of papers on the geometry of conies rational normal curves, and other special plane curves, which were all extremely elegant. But White's main contribution to geometry was his influence on the young men reading mathematics. His enthusiasm for geometry sparked off a similar enthusiasm in others. These were the young men who went on to join the Baker school, which was extremely active from the mid-twenties to the mid-thirties. The main activity of this was a seminar, known as " Baker's Saturday tea-party ", which Baker and White presided over in person.
White served on the council of London Mathematical Society from 1923-47. He was Honorary Secretary from 1926-44 and Vice-president from 1944-46. His continuous service of 24 years on the Council of the London Mathematical Society included 18 years as secretary and simultaneously, from 1924 to 1936, he was Mathematical Secretary of the Cambridge Philosophical Society (of which he later became President). In addition to the normal duties in connection with the running of the societies, White did a vast amount of editing of mathematical papers, and his contemporaries were familiar with the sight of him carrying round proof sheets and working on them whenever he had an opportunity. There was less paper work and travelling to London to do during the war, but the responsibility of keeping the Society going during this period fell on him.
But White's services to his University and his College were not limited to mathematics. He was a member of the Cambridge University Press Syndicate continuously from 1931 to 1958, and on the Library Syndicate from 1949 to 1960. He also served on the University Financial Board, and on the Ely Diocesan Board of Finance. He was one of the local secretaries when the British Association met in Cambridge in 1938.
White was dedicated to serving St. John’s College for his whole life. As a regular Chapel-goer, he was active in the affairs of the College Mission, and he served the College in a number of minor offices, including that of Tutorial Bursar. He was also Senior Treasurer of the Committee for the St. John's College Mission at Hoxton from 1921. But his greatest service was in the office of Librarian, which he held from 1948 to 1961. He had always been a collector of early mathematical and scientific books, many of which he later gave to the University Library, and he was well equipped for a librarian's duties. Every aspect of the Library received his loving attention, and his labours to arrange and catalogue vast numbers of documents were unceasing. The College records, particularly the Records of Admissions, claimed his constant attention, and on his retirement under the statutory age limit from the Librarianship, the College fittingly recognised his services by creating for him the special office of Keeper of the College Records.
White was married to Barbara Dale, daughter of Sir Alfred Dale, Vice-Chancellor of Liverpool University, whom he married in 1934. She was for many years Fellow and Bursar of Newnham College. White died on 11th July 1969.

William Allen Whitworth was a mathematician and Church of England clergyman. He was born in Runcorn on 1 February 1840. He was the eldest son in the family of four sons and two daughters of William Whitworth and his wife, Susanna Coyne.
He was educated at Sandicroft School, Northwich from 1851-57 and then at St John's College, Cambridge, matriculating in 1858. In 1862 he graduated BA as sixteenth wrangler, he obtained his MA in 1865, and he was fellow of St. John’s College from 1867 to 1884. He was successively chief mathematics master at Portarlington School and Rossall School and professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Liverpool.
Whilst he was an undergraduate he was principal editor, along with Charles Taylor and others, of the Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin Messenger of Mathematics, which was started at Cambridge in November 1861. Whitworth remained one of the editors until 1880, and was a frequent contributor. Whitworth's best-known mathematical work, Choice and Chance, an Elementary Treatise on Permutations, Combinations and Probability (1867), developed from lectures delivered to women at Queen's College, Liverpool, in 1866. A model of clear and simple exposition, it presented a very ample collection of problems on probability and kindred subjects.
Whitworth was ordained deacon in 1865 and priest in 1866, and won high repute in his clerical career. He was the curate at St Anne's, Birkenhead (1865), and of St Luke's, Liverpool (1866–70), and perpetual curate of Christ Church, Liverpool (1870–75). He was vicar of St John the Evangelist, Hammersmith (1875–86), and from November 1886 until his death, vicar of All Saints, Marylebone. He also held a college living from 1885 in the diocese of Bangor, and was in the 1891–2 commissary of the South African diocese of Bloemfontein. Whitworth was select preacher at Cambridge five times and the Hulsean lecturer there in 1903–4. He was made a prebendary of St Paul's Cathedral in 1900. On 10 June 1885 he married Sarah Louisa Elwes. The couple had four sons, all graduates of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Whitworth, though he had been brought up an evangelical, was influenced at Cambridge by the scholarship of J. B. Lightfoot and B. F. Westcott, and he later studied the German rationalizing school of theology. He was considered to be a good and original preacher. His sympathies lay mainly with the high-church party, and in 1875 he joined the English Church Union. His ecclesiastical publications included an almanac of dates of Easter (1882), a description of All Saints Church, Margaret Street (1891); Worship in the Christian Church (1899), and two posthumous volumes of sermons (1906, 1908).
Whitworth died on 12 March 1905 at Home Hospital, Fitzroy Square, London after a serious operation on 28 February. He was buried at on 16 March in ground belonging to St Alban the Martyr, Holborn. There is a slab to his memory in the floor of All Saints Church, Margaret Street.