French scholar, diplomat, and politician. His appointment as French premier by the moderate Republicans, largely because of his cautious and colourless personality, marked the beginning of a trend in the Third Republic toward the exclusion from power of outstanding men.

The son of an English manufacturer living in France since 1780, Waddington began his education in France but completed it in England at Rugby and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He traveled in the eastern Mediterranean, published a number of studies on Middle Eastern and Roman antiquities, and was elected to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1865. In the same year and again in 1869, he ran unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Chamber of Deputies. He was elected, however, as an independent in 1871; he was elected senator in 1876. Waddington was minister of education for a few days in May 1873 and again from March 1876 to May 1877. Becoming minister of foreign affairs in December 1877, he distinguished himself as the French representative at the Congress of Berlin (1878).

When elections in January 1879 strengthened the power of the moderate Republicans, the more conservative Marshal Patrice Mac-Mahon was compelled to resign the presidency, and Jules Grévy, who succeeded to the post, chose Waddington as premier (February 1879), partly because he feared that by elevating the brilliant Léon Gambetta, at the time the leading figure among the Republicans, his own prestige would be eclipsed. Waddington did not, in fact, attempt to impose his leadership on the government. Rather, he retained his post as minister of foreign affairs and devoted his energies to active diplomacy over the status of Egypt and the Balkans. However, a member of his cabinet, Jules Ferry (Ferry, Jules), who would later become premier, introduced measures to drastically reduce the influence of the Roman Catholic church in education. This provoked a controversy so bitter that Waddington was forced to resign (December 1879). As ambassador to Great Britain (1883–93) he handled the negotiations over Egypt in 1884. He lost his seat in the Senate in 1893.