Abstract
WILLIAM McFADDEN ORR was born on May 2, 1866, and died in his sixty-eighth year on August 14, having resigned his professorship of pure and applied mathematics in University College, Dublin, and retired from active work less than a year ago. In the Ireland of Orr's youth, the examina tions for the different grades of secondary education were intensely competitive, the exhibitions and prizes being valuable, and Orr, a student of the Methodist College, Belfast, although two years under age, had an unbroken and amazing series of successes. In Queen's University, Belfast, and St. John's College, Cambridge, his mathematical triumphs were repeated, and following the example of another alumnus of Queen's University, now Sir Joseph Larmor, he became Senior Wrangler in 1888; he was also given a fellowship in St. John's College, Cambridge. He became fellow of the Royal Society in 1909, and received the honorary degree of D.Sc. from Queen's University, Belfast, in 1919. In 1892 he was ap pointed professor of mathematics in the Royal College of Science for Ireland, and on this institution being absorbed by University College, Dublin, in 1926, he was transferred to an equal position with the title of professor of pure and applied mathematics. He retired on September 30, 1933.
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C., A. Prof. W. McFadden Orr, F.R.S. Nature 134, 487 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/134487a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/134487a0