Abstract
XXI.—WILLIAM SPOTTISWOODE WILLIAM SPOTTISWOODE, President of the Royal Society, was born in London, Jan. 11, 1825. He belongs to an ancient Scottish family, many members of which have risen to distinction in Scotland and also in the New World.1 He was first sent to a private (we believe) school at Laleham under Mr. Buckland, brother of Dean Bucklartd. Here, we read, “the discipline was of a severity unknown at the present day.” Thence he was removed to Eton, where however his stay was short. The poet writes, “the child is father of the man”; but science in those days did not hold the place it does now in the scholastic curriculum, and so the future President, venturing to make some researches into the effects produced by the combination of various detonants, came into collision with the “powers that be” ;2 the upshot of this con1relenzfts was that the brothers Spottiswoode were transferred to Harrow, then under the rule of the present Bishop of Lincoln. His house tutor was Mr. Harris, of the Park.3 On entrance he was placed in the upper shell, a high form in those days for a newcomer: here he was a very studious, quiet, and thoughtful boy, not much given to athletic games. He remained at Harrow three years, and in 1842 obtained a Lyon Scholarship.4 In this same year he entered Balliol College, Oxford, and had the present Bishop of Exeter for his mathematical tutor; subsequently, in 1845, the last year of his residence as an undergraduate, he read with the Rev. Bartholomew Price, of Pembroke College. This gentleman writes: “He showed extraordinary liking for, and great skill in, what I may call the morphology of mathematics, such as the theory of simultaneous equations and the results deducible from the form of these equations, a department in which he has since shown great ability. He had, I think, greater taste for these branches in their algebraical and geometrical developments than for any other. His power of work was very great and his industry equally so; he read a great deal outside the usual range.” In 1845 he took a first class in mathematics, and he afterwards won the Junior (1846) and Senior (1847) University Mathematical Scholarships. He returned to Oxford for a term or two, and gave a course of lectures in Balliol College on Geometry of Three Dimensions-a favourite subject of his. He was Examiner in the Mathematical Schools in 1857-58.° On leaving Oxford, he immediately, we believe, took an active part in the working management of the business of the Queen's printers, about this time resigned to him by his father, Andrew Spottiswoode, brother of the Laird of Spottiswoode. The business has largely developed under his hands.
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SCIENTIFIC WORTHIES . Nature 27, 597–601 (1883). https://doi.org/10.1038/027597a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/027597a0