ABSTRACT
William Burnside (1852–1927) was professor of mathematics at Royal Naval College, Greenwich from 1892 until 1917. The following is an impressionistic account of his contributions to pure (but applicable) mathematics. It is written for a non-specialist readership and explains why he counts as one of the great twentieth-century British mathematicians, even although he worked in a rare kind of isolation, producing internationally famous work in Group Theory, but unable to persuade his British contemporaries of the value and interest of research in the subject.
