Professor Steggall was born in London in 1855, the son of Dr J W B Steggall, a physician, originally from East Anglia. He was educated at the City of London School and Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating second Wrangler in 1878. He subsequently taught at Clifton College (1878-9) and Owens College, Manchester (1880-1883) before being appointed to the Chair of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at the newly founded University College, Dundee. He became Professor of Pure and Applied Mathematics in 1895. On his retirement in 1933 he received an honorary degree from the University of St Andrews.
As well as being a brilliant mathematician, Steggall was keenly interested in music, art, architecture, and photography. He married Isabella Katherine Frazer, the sister of Sir James G Frazer, in 1878, with whom he had two daughters and a son, a Royal Naval officer who was killed at the Battle of Jutland in 1916.
From the guide to the John Edward Aloysius Steggall, Professor of Pure and Applied Mathematics, 1882-1931, (University of Dundee)
