William Spottiswoode
William Spottiswoode Balliol College | |
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Scientific career | |
Fields | Mathematics, physics |
William H. Spottiswoode
Biography
Early life
Spottiswoode was born in London on 11 January 1825, the son of Andrew Spottiswoode and his wife, Mary Longman. His father was descended from an ancient Scottish family, represented Colchester in parliament for some years, and in 1831 became junior partner in the firm of Eyre & Spottiswoode, printers.
William was educated at Laleham Lea School,
Family
On 27 November 1861 at Bexley in Kent, he married Elisa ("Lise") Taylor Arbuthnot, daughter of William Urquhart Arbuthnot (son of Sir William Arbuthnot, 1st Baronet).
Their children included William Hugh Spottiswoode (1864–1915)[4][5] and Cyril Andrew Spottiswoode (1867–1915).[6]
Career
In 1846 he left Oxford to take his father's place in the business, in which he was engaged until his death. In 1847 he issued five pamphlets entitled Meditationes analyticae. This was his first publication of original mathematical work, and from this time scarcely a year passed in which he did not give to the world further mathematical research.
In 1856 Spottiswoode travelled in eastern Russia, and in 1860 in Croatia and Hungary; of the former expedition he has left a record, A Tarantasse Journey through Eastern Russia in the Autumn of 1856 (London, 1857).
In 1870 he was elected president of the
He died in London of typhoid fever on 27 June 1883 and was buried in the south transept[7] of Westminster Abbey.[8]
As a mathematician, he occupied himself with many branches of his favorite science, more especially with higher algebra, including the theory of determinants, with the general calculus of symbols, and with the application of analysis to geometry and mechanics.
The following brief review of his mathematical work is quoted from the obituary notice which appeared in the Proceedings of tile Royal Society (xxxviii. 34):
- The interesting series of communications on the contact of curves and surfaces which are contained in the Philosophical Transactions of 1862 and subsequent years would alone account for the high rank he obtained as a mathematician. – – – The mastery which he had obtained over the mathematical symbols was so complete that he never shrank from the use of expressions, however complicated nay, the more complicated they were the more he seemed to revel in them provided they did not sin against the ruling spirit of all his work symmetry. To a mind imbued with the love of mathematical symmetry, the study of determinants had naturally every attraction. In 1851 Mr. Spottiswoode published in the form of a pamphlet an account of some elementary theorems on the subject. This had fallen out of print, permission was sought by the editor of Crelle's Journal to reproduce it in the pages of that journal. Mr. Spottiswoode granted the request and undertook to revise his work. The subject had, however, been so extensively developed in the interim that it proved necessary not merely to revise it but entirely to rewrite the work, which became a memoir of 116 pages. To this, the first elementary treatise on determinants, much of the rapid development of the subject is due. The effect of the study on Mr. Spottiswoode's own methods was most pronounced; there is scarcely a page of his mathematical writings that does not bristle with determinants. His papers, numbering over 100, were published principally in the Philosophical Transactions, Proceedings of the Royal Society, Quarterly Journal of Mathematics, Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society and Crelle's Journal, and one or two in the Comptes rendus of the Paris Academy; a list of them, arranged according to the several journals in which they originally appeared, with short notes upon the less familiar memoirs, is given in Nature, xxvii, 599.
Publications
- Elementary Theorems Relating to Determinants (London: Longman, Brown, Green, & Longman, 1851) (Alternate URL)
- A tarantasse journey through eastern Russia in the autumn of 1856
- "Polarised Light". Science Lectures at South Kensington. Vol. II. London: Macmillan & Company. 1879. pp. 1–14.
- Description of a Large Induction-coil The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine, Vol. 3, No. 15, Jan 1877, p. 30
See also
References
- ^ GRO Register of Deaths: JUN 1883 1a 303 ST GEO HAN SQ – William Spottiswoode, aged 58
- ^ Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900. .
- ^ O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "William Spottiswoode", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
- ^ Addison, Henry Robert; Oakes, Charles Henry; Lawson, William John; Sladen, Douglas Brooke Wheelton (1905). "Spottiswoode, William Hugh". Who's Who. Vol. 57. p. 1515.
- ^ "William Hugh Spottiswoode". The Inland Printer. Vol. 56. 1916. p. 108.
- ^ Spottiswoode, Cyril Andrew (1867–1915), son of William Spottiswoode
- ^ 'The Abbey Scientists' Hall, A.R. p. 58: London; Roger & Robert Nicholson; 1966
- ^ William Spottiswoode – Westminster Abbey