The Senior Wrangler is the top mathematics undergraduate at the University of Cambridge in England, a position which has been described as "the greatest intellectual achievement attainable in Britain." Specifically, it is the person who achieves the highest overall mark among the Wranglers – the students at Cambridge who gain first-class degrees in mathematics. The Cambridge undergraduate mathematics course, or Mathematical Tripos, is famously difficult. Many Senior Wranglers have become world-leading figures in mathematics, physics, and other fields. They include George Airy, Jacob Bronowski, Christopher Budd, Kevin Buzzard, Arthur Cayley, Donald Coxeter, Arthur Eddington, Ben Green, John Herschel, James Inman, J. E. Littlewood, Lee Hsien Loong, Jayant Narlikar, Morris Pell, John Polkinghorne, Frank Ramsey, Lord Rayleigh (John Strutt), Sir George Stokes, Isaac Todhunter, Sir Gilbert Walker, and James H. Wilkinson. Senior Wranglers were once fêted with torchlit processions and took pride of place in the University's graduation ceremony. Years in Cambridge were often remembered by who had been Senior Wrangler that year. The annual ceremony in which the Senior Wrangler becomes known was first held in the 18th century. Standing on the balcony of the University's Senate House, the examiner reads out the class results for mathematics, and printed copies of the results are then thrown to the audience below. The examiner no longer announces the students' exact rankings, but they still identify the Senior Wrangler, nowadays by tipping their academic hat when reading out the person's name. Others who finished in the top 12 Those who have achieved second place, known as Second Wranglers, include Alfred Marshall, James Clerk Maxwell, J. J. Thomson, Lord Kelvin, William Clifford, and William Whewell. Those who have finished between third and 12th include Archibald Hill, Karl Pearson and William Henry Bragg (third), George Green, G. H. Hardy, and Alfred North Whitehead (fourth), Adam Sedgwick (fifth), John Venn (sixth), Bertrand Russell, Nevil Maskelyne and Sir James Timmins Chance (seventh), Thomas Malthus (ninth), and John Maynard Keynes and William Henry Fox Talbot (12th). History Between 1748 and 1909, the University publicly announced the ranking, which was then reported in newspapers such as The Times. The examination was considered to be by far the most important in Britain and the Empire. The prestige of being a high Wrangler was great; the respect accorded to the Senior Wrangler was immense. Andrew Warwick, author of Masters of Theory, describes the term 'Senior Wrangler' as "synonymous with academic supremacy".