William Nicholas Roseveare was the son of William Roseveare and his wife Mary Clouter, born Polgreen. He entered St John's College, University of Cambridge, in 1882 and was awarded the degree Master of
Arts (MA). He was elected a fellow of the college in 1888. He subsequently taught temporarily at King's College, London, and at Westminster School, and then became mathematics master at Harrow
School, a prestigious school at Harrow-on-the-Hill, near London. While there he
corresponded regularly with the British physicist Sir Joseph Larmor during
1893-1900. He also published some papers in the Mathematical Gazette, dealing with 'A chapter on algebra' (1903, in
2 parts), the convergence of series (1905), the expansion of trigonometrical
functions (1905), and the expansion of functions in general (1905).
In 1906 Roseveare came to the Cape Colony and for a few
years held temporary appointments at Stellenbosch and at Huguenot College,
Wellington. In 1910 the University of the Cape of Good Hope admitted him to its
MA degree on the basis of his degree from the University of Cambridge. That
same year he was appointed as the first professor of pure and applied
mathematics at the newly established Natal University College in
Pietermaritzburg, arriving there in August 1910. He held this post until his
retirement in either 1926 or 1930. In addition to teaching he served as both rugby coach (1913-1924) and cricket coach (1920-1921).
Roseveare was a member of the Royal Society of South Africa
and published two papers in its Transactions,
both in 1914, dealing with proofs that every equation has roots, real or
imaginary, equal in number to its degree. In 1912 he became a member of the
South African Association for the Advancement of Science, serving as president
of Section A (which included mathematics) at the association's annual congress
in 1917, and as joint vice-president of the association for 1917-1918. He
contributed several papers to the annual Report
of the association and its successor, the South
African Journal of Science, dealing with 'Transition from elementary
algebra to the calculus, without infinite series' (1915); 'On the gamma or
factorial function' (1915); 'On equilateral triangles inscribed in ellipses,
and regular tetrahedra inscribed in ellipsoids' (1916); and 'A short note on
Einstein's planetary equation' (1920).
Roseveare was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical
Society in 1923. He was devoted to his small home-made observatory and was instrumental in having a 100 mm refractor telescope brought to Pietermaritzburg in the nineteen-twenties. The government astronomer Edmund Nevill* had used this telescope before it was given to the Durban Technical College in 1917 and subsequently entrusted to the Physics Department of the Natal University College. In 1927 Roseveare gave a highly successful public lecture on "The stars". He has been described as an 'able, absent-minded and lovable
man' (Brooke, 1966, p. 28). In 1893 he married Ethel Mary Bushell, with whom he had five children.
