Cayley, ARTHUR

Cayley, ARTHUR, mathematician, was born at Richmond, Surrey, in 1821. He was educated at King's College, London, and Trinity College, Cambridge, and graduated as senior wrangler and first Smith's prizeman in 1842. He was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1849, and established a practice as a conveyancer. In 1863 he was elected first Sadlerian Professor of pure Mathematics at Cambridge, and in 1875 to a fellowship of Trinity College; and he received honorary degrees from Oxford, Dublin, and Leyden. He was president of the Royal Astronomical Society (1872–73), and of the British Association at its Southport meeting in 1883, where his address on the ultimate possibilities of mathematics attracted much attention. In 1882 he lectured at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and received the Copley medal of the Royal Society. His chief book is an Elementary Treatise on Elliptic Functions (1876); a ten volume edition of his Mathematical Papers was begun in 1889. He died 26th January 1895.