John Wilson (English judge)

Sir John Wilson was an English mathematician and judge, best remembered because Wilson's theorem, a result about prime numbers, is named after him. Born in 1741 at Applethwaite in Westmorland, he attended school at Staveley and then went up to Peterhouse, Cambridge, in 1757, where he was a student of Edward Waring and became Senior Wrangler in 1761. He then followed a legal career, was knighted, became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1782, and served as Judge of the Common Pleas from 1786 until his death at Kendal in 1793.