Abstract
SIR ALFRED BRAY KEMPE, whose death occurred on April 21, was born in 1849, and educated at St. Paul's School and at Cambridge, where he was twenty-second Wrangler. His first contribution to the science of mathematics was in 1876, when, in a paper on a general method of describing curves of the nth degree by link-work, he laid the foundation of the excellent discoveries he was destined to make in “linkages ”-a subject in which he took a lifelong interest. In 1877 he gave his well-known lecture, “How to draw a straight line,” in which he traced the history of the connection between the straight line and linkages from the partially successful attempts of Watt, Richard Roberts, and Tchebicheff, to the practical solution of the problem by Peaucellier in 1864. Together with Hart of Woolwich Academy and Sylvester he had added much to the knowledge of the subject, and these additions he described with models.
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M., P. Sir A. B. Kempe, F.R.S. Nature 109, 588–589 (1922). https://doi.org/10.1038/109588a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/109588a0