Background
Ferrar was born to a lamplighter in 1893 and attended Bristol Grammar School.
Ferrar was born to a lamplighter in 1893 and attended Bristol Grammar School.
The Queen"s College.
With the start of the first World War, Ferrar left school to join the military, serving as an intelligence agent and telephonist in France. He returned to Oxford in 1919 and finished his degree the year after. He later became a lecturer in Edinburgh for several years.
There he wrote papers on convergent series, interpolation theory, and number theory.
From its creation until 1933, he was the editor of the Quarterly Journal of Mathematics in which he published many papers. In 1937, he became the bursar of Hertford College, Oxford which he was employed at for 22 years.
In his career he wrote ten mathematical textbooks. After being the bursar he became the principal of the college.