Percival Frost was born at
Kingston upon Hull on 1 September 1817, the second son of Charles Frost. He was educated at Beverley and Oakham, and entered
St. John's College, Cambridge, in October 1835, graduating B.A. as
second wrangler in 1839 and M.A. in 1842. He was chosen first Smith prizeman in 1839, beating the senior wrangler,
Benjamin Morgan Cowie, his fellow-collegian, and he was elected to a fellowship at St. John's College on 19 March. In 1841 he was ordained deacon, and in the same year vacated his fellowship by marriage. He held a mathematical lectureship in
Jesus College from 1847 to 1859, and in King's College from 1859 to 1889; but his chief work consisted in the tuition of private pupils, among whom were
John Rigby,
William Kingdon Clifford, and
Joseph Wolstenholme. He was a man of wide interests and varied attainments, an accomplished pianoforte player, and a successful painter in water-colours. On 2 June 1841 he was married at Finchley to Jennett Louisa, daughter of Richard Dixon of Oak Lodge, Finchley. In 1854, Frost edited the first three sections of
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica by
Isaac Newton. New editions were published in 1863, 1878, and 1883. In 1863 he prepared, in conjunction with
Joseph Wolstenholme,
A Treatise on Solid Geometry, of which second and third editions, by Frost alone, appeared in 1875 and 1886.
Hints for the Solution of Problems in the Third Edition of
Solid Geometry was published in 1887. His third work,
An Elementary Treatise on Curve Tracing, appeared in 1872. On 7 June 1883, Frost was admitted as a fellow of the
Royal Society, and in the same year he was elected by King's College, Cambridge, to a fellowship, which he retained until his death. In 1883 Frost proceeded to the recently established degree of
Doctor of Science. Frost died at Cambridge on 5 June 1898, at his house in Fitzwilliam Street, and was buried on 10 June in the
Mill Road cemetery, Cambridge. Besides the works already mentioned, Frost was the author of numerous papers in the
Cambridge Mathematical Journal, the
Oxford and Cambridge Journal of Mathematics, and the
Quarterly Journal of Mathematics. ==Works==