William Spottiswoode

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Use British English Template:Infobox scientist

William H. Spottiswoode Template:Post-nominals HFRSE LLD (11 January 1825 – 27 June 1883)Template:Sfn was an English mathematician, physicist and partner in the printing and publishing firm Eyre & Spottiswoode. He was president of the Royal Society from 1878 to 1883.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

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, Eton College, and Harrow School. He then studied Mathematics and Physics at Balliol College, Oxford.Template:Sfn His talent for science showed itself while he was still a schoolboy, and indeed his removal from Eton to Harrow is said to have been occasioned by an accidental explosion which occurred whilst he was performing an experiment for his own amusement. At Harrow he obtained a Lyon scholarship in 1842, and at Oxford in 1845 a first-class in mathematics, in 1846 the junior and in 1847 the senior university mathematical scholarship.

Family

On 27 November 1861 at Bexley in Kent, he married Elisa ("Lise") Taylor Arbuthnot (1837–1894), daughter of William Urquhart Arbuthnot (son of Sir William Arbuthnot, 1st Baronet).

Their children included William Hugh Spottiswoode (1864–1915)Template:Sfn Template:Sfn and Cyril Andrew Spottiswoode (1867–1915).Template:Sfn

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 Spottiswoode issued five pamphlets entitled Meditationes Analyticae, that explored complex mathematical ideas through analytic methods, particularly focusing on functions and calculus. These pamphlets, among other things, exhibited advanced mathematical analytics and solutions to complex equations that examined the behavior of mathematical functions more deeply and precisely. These were his first publications of original mathematical work. From then on, he published new research almost every year.

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 London Mathematical Society. In 1871 he began to turn his attention to experimental physics, his earlier researches bearing upon the light polarization and his later work upon the electrical discharge in rarefied gases. He wrote a popular treatise on the former subject for the Nature Series in 1874. In 1878 he was elected president of the British Association and in the same year president of the Royal Society, of which he had been a fellow since 1853.

He died in London of typhoid fever on 27 June 1883 and was buried in the south transeptTemplate:Sfn of Westminster Abbey.Template:Sfn

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 the Royal Society (xxxviii. 34): Template:PortalSection

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.