William Charles Waterhouse is an American mathematician

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....

, a professor of Mathematics at Pennsylvania State University

Pennsylvania State University

The Pennsylvania State University, commonly referred to as Penn State or PSU, is a public research university with campuses and facilities throughout the state of Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1855, the university has a threefold mission of teaching, research, and public service...

. His research interests include abstract algebra

Abstract algebra

Abstract algebra is the subject area of mathematics that studies algebraic structures, such as groups, rings, fields, modules, vector spaces, and algebras...

, number theory

Number theory

Number theory is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers. Number theorists study prime numbers as well...

, group scheme

Group scheme

In mathematics, a group scheme is a type of algebro-geometric object equipped with a composition law. Group schemes arise naturally as symmetries of schemes, and they generalize algebraic groups, in the sense that all algebraic groups have group scheme structure, but group schemes are not...

s, and the history of mathematics

History of mathematics

The area of study known as the history of mathematics is primarily an investigation into the origin of discoveries in mathematics and, to a lesser extent, an investigation into the mathematical methods and notation of the past....

. He edited the 1966 English translation of Gauss

Carl Friedrich Gauss

Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss was a German mathematician and scientist who contributed significantly to many fields, including number theory, statistics, analysis, differential geometry, geodesy, geophysics, electrostatics, astronomy and optics.Sometimes referred to as the Princeps mathematicorum...

's Disquisitiones Arithmeticae

Disquisitiones Arithmeticae

The Disquisitiones Arithmeticae is a textbook of number theory written in Latin by Carl Friedrich Gauss in 1798 when Gauss was 21 and first published in 1801 when he was 24...

and is the author of the textbook Introduction to Affine Group Schemes.

In both 1961 and 1962, Waterhouse (at that time an undergraduate at Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

) earned a Putnam Fellowship as one of the top five competitors on the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition

William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition

The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, often abbreviated to the Putnam Competition, is an annual mathematics competition for undergraduate college students of the United States and Canada, awarding scholarships and cash prizes ranging from $250 to $2,500 for the top students and $5,000...

; with his 1962 performance, he led his school to a third-place team award. He received his Ph.D. in 1968 from Harvard, for work on abelian varieties

Abelian variety

In mathematics, particularly in algebraic geometry, complex analysis and number theory, an abelian variety is a projective algebraic variety that is also an algebraic group, i.e., has a group law that can be defined by regular functions...

 under the supervision of John Tate

John Tate

John Torrence Tate Jr. is an American mathematician, distinguished for many fundamental contributions in algebraic number theory, arithmetic geometry and related areas in algebraic geometry.-Biography:...

, and took a faculty position at Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

. In 1975 he moved to Penn State.

Waterhouse has won the Lester R. Ford Award of the Mathematical Association of America

Mathematical Association of America

The Mathematical Association of America is a professional society that focuses on mathematics accessible at the undergraduate level. Members include university, college, and high school teachers; graduate and undergraduate students; pure and applied mathematicians; computer scientists;...

twice, in 1984 for his paper "Do Symmetric Problems Have Symmetric Solutions?" and in 1995 for his paper "A Counterexample for Germain".