Thomas Archer Hirst
Encyclopedia
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
, specialising in geometry
Geometry
Geometry arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers ....
. He was awarded the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
's Royal Medal
Royal Medal
The Royal Medal, also known as The Queen's Medal, is a silver-gilt medal awarded each year by the Royal Society, two for "the most important contributions to the advancement of natural knowledge" and one for "distinguished contributions in the applied sciences" made within the Commonwealth of...
in 1883.
Life
He was born in HeckmondwikeHeckmondwike
Heckmondwike is a small town in the metropolitan borough of Kirklees, which is located geographically at the centre of West Yorkshire, England, south west of Leeds. Close to Cleckheaton and Liversedge, it is part of Cleckheckmondsedge, a name invented by J.B. Priestley to represent a West Riding...
, Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
, where both his parents came from families in the wool trade. Thomas was the youngest of four sons. The family moved to Wakefield
Wakefield
Wakefield is the main settlement and administrative centre of the City of Wakefield, a metropolitan district of West Yorkshire, England. Located by the River Calder on the eastern edge of the Pennines, the urban area is and had a population of 76,886 in 2001....
so that the boys could attend a better school. He left school at fifteen to work as an apprentice engineer in Halifax
Halifax, West Yorkshire
Halifax is a minster town, within the Metropolitan Borough of Calderdale in West Yorkshire, England. It has an urban area population of 82,056 in the 2001 Census. It is well-known as a centre of England's woollen manufacture from the 15th century onward, originally dealing through the Halifax Piece...
, surveying for proposed railway lines. It was there that he met John Tyndall
John Tyndall
John Tyndall FRS was a prominent Irish 19th century physicist. His initial scientific fame arose in the 1850s from his study of diamagnetism. Later he studied thermal radiation, and produced a number of discoveries about processes in the atmosphere...
, ten years older than Hirst and working as an engineer in the same firm.
In his late teens, at the instigation of Tyndall, he decided to go to Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
for education, initially in chemistry. He eventually received a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Marburg in 1852 (tutor: Friedrich Ludwig Stegmann). In 1853 he attended geometry lectures by Jakob Steiner
Jakob Steiner
Jakob Steiner was a Swiss mathematician who worked primarily in geometry.-Personal and professional life:...
at University of Berlin. He married Anna Martin in 1854, and spent much of the decade of the 1850s on the European continent, where he socialized with many mathematicians, and used his inherited wealth to support himself.
From 1860 to 1864 he taught at University College School
University College School
University College School, generally known as UCS, is an Independent school charity situated in Hampstead, north west London, England. The school was founded in 1830 by University College London and inherited many of that institution's progressive and secular views...
but resigned because he wanted more time for his mathematical research. He was appointed Professor of Physics at University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
in 1865, and he succeeded Augustus de Morgan
Augustus De Morgan
Augustus De Morgan was a British mathematician and logician. He formulated De Morgan's laws and introduced the term mathematical induction, making its idea rigorous. The crater De Morgan on the Moon is named after him....
to the Chair of Mathematics at UCL in 1867. In 1873 he was appointed Director of Studies at the Royal Naval College
Old Royal Naval College
The Old Royal Naval College is the architectural centrepiece of Maritime Greenwich, a World Heritage Site in Greenwich, London, described by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation as being of “outstanding universal value” and reckoned to be the “finest and most...
, Greenwich
Greenwich
Greenwich is a district of south London, England, located in the London Borough of Greenwich.Greenwich is best known for its maritime history and for giving its name to the Greenwich Meridian and Greenwich Mean Time...
In Britain from the 1860s onwards Hirst also allocated much of his time to the administrative committees of British science. He was an active member of the governing councils of the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
, the British Association for the Advancement of Science
British Association for the Advancement of Science
frame|right|"The BA" logoThe British Association for the Advancement of Science or the British Science Association, formerly known as the BA, is a learned society with the object of promoting science, directing general attention to scientific matters, and facilitating interaction between...
, and the London Mathematical Society
London Mathematical Society
-See also:* American Mathematical Society* Edinburgh Mathematical Society* European Mathematical Society* List of Mathematical Societies* Council for the Mathematical Sciences* BCS-FACS Specialist Group-External links:* * *...
. He was the founding president of an association to reform school mathematics curricula, and worked for the education of women. Alongside his old friend Tyndall, Hirst was a member of T.H.Huxley’s London X-Club. He died in London in 1892, four weeks after he made the last entry in his journal.
Vestiges
In his early days Hirst wrote extensively in his notebooks (sometimes called the Journal), recording everything he read and much of what he was thinking about. This extraordinary record of about fifty years is preserved in the library of the Royal InstitutionRoyal Institution
The Royal Institution of Great Britain is an organization devoted to scientific education and research, based in London.-Overview:...
. As a result, we know much about the development of his mind before he became a professional mathematician. We know, for example, what the effect was of his reading the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation is a unique work of speculative natural history published anonymously in England in 1844. It brought together various ideas of stellar evolution with the progressive transmutation of species in an accessible narrative which tied together numerous...
, that epoch-making book authored anonymously by Robert Chambers which promoted the idea of evolution in 1844.
- "Almost no-one reads like this anymore. It is the reading practice of a self-improving autodidact, shaped by Bible-reading amongst denominations of learned liberal DissentDissenterThe term dissenter , labels one who disagrees in matters of opinion, belief, etc. In the social and religious history of England and Wales, however, it refers particularly to a member of a religious body who has, for one reason or another, separated from the Established Church.Originally, the term...
... Hirst copied large chunks into his journal... the journal shows that Hirst moved between Vestiges and other related works such as Paley'William PaleyWilliam Paley was a British Christian apologist, philosopher, and utilitarian. He is best known for his exposition of the teleological argument for the existence of God in his work Natural Theology, which made use of the watchmaker analogy .-Life:Paley was Born in Peterborough, England, and was...
s Natural TheologyNatural theologyNatural theology is a branch of theology based on reason and ordinary experience. Thus it is distinguished from revealed theology which is based on scripture and religious experiences of various kinds; and also from transcendental theology, theology from a priori reasoning.Marcus Terentius Varro ...
and John Arthur PhillipsJohn Arthur PhillipsJohn Arthur Phillips was a British geologist. He was born at Polgooth, near St Austell in Cornwall the son of John Phillips, who at one time was occupied as a mineral agent, and of Prudence Gaved of Tregian, St Ewe....
' Geology of Yorkshire... "
Both Hirst and Tyndall left in their journals and letters evidence that Vestiges (especially its geological evidence) made a good case against the story of Genesis and the case for divine intervention; yet they were not atheists. They simply came to the conclusion that parts of the Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
were allegorical.
Mathematics
Hirst was a projective geometerProjective geometry
In mathematics, projective geometry is the study of geometric properties that are invariant under projective transformations. This means that, compared to elementary geometry, projective geometry has a different setting, projective space, and a selective set of basic geometric concepts...
in the style of Poncelet
Jean-Victor Poncelet
Jean-Victor Poncelet was a French engineer and mathematician who served most notably as the commandant general of the École Polytechnique...
and Steiner
Jakob Steiner
Jakob Steiner was a Swiss mathematician who worked primarily in geometry.-Personal and professional life:...
. He was not an adherent of the algebraic geometry
Algebraic geometry
Algebraic geometry is a branch of mathematics which combines techniques of abstract algebra, especially commutative algebra, with the language and the problems of geometry. It occupies a central place in modern mathematics and has multiple conceptual connections with such diverse fields as complex...
approach of Cayley
Arthur Cayley
Arthur Cayley F.R.S. was a British mathematician. He helped found the modern British school of pure mathematics....
and Sylvester
James Joseph Sylvester
James Joseph Sylvester was an English mathematician. He made fundamental contributions to matrix theory, invariant theory, number theory, partition theory and combinatorics...
, despite being a personal friend of theirs. His speciality was Cremona transformations
Cremona group
In mathematics, in birational geometry, the Cremona group of order n over a field k is the group of birational automorphisms of the n-dimensional projective space over k...
.