Walter Wilson Stothers

Walter Wilson Stothers (8 November 1946 – 16 July 2009) was a British mathematician who proved the Mason-Stothers theorem in the early 1980s.

He was the third and youngest son of a family doctor in Glasgow and a mother, who herself had graduated in mathematics in 1927. He attended a secondary school in Glasgow which specialised in science education. From 1964 to 1968 he was a student in the Science Faculty of the University of Glasgow graduating with a First Class Honours degree.

In September 1968 he married Andrea Watson before beginning further studies at Peterhouse, Cambridge from where he had received a "Jack Scholarship".

Under the supervision of Peter Swinnerton-Dyer, Stothers studied for a Ph.D. in Number theory at the University of Cambridge from 1968 to 1971. He obtained his doctorate in 1972 with a Ph.D. thesis entitled "Some Discrete Triangle Groups".

His main achievement was proving the Mason-Stothers theorem in 1981.