Spottiswoode, WILLIAM

Spottiswoode, WILLIAM, mathematician, was born in London, January 11, 1825, and was educated at Harrow and Balliol College, Oxford. He took a first-class in mathematics in 1845, and later both the junior and senior university mathematical scholarships. For some time he lectured at Balliol, and in 1846 he succeeded his father as the head of the great printing-house of Eyre & Spottiswoode. Although throughout life an energetic man of business, he found time for much original work in abstract mathematics and experimental physics; as well as for travels in Eastern Russia (1856), Croatia and Hungary (1860), and for a large hospitality at his houses both in London and at Sevenoaks. His contributions to the Proceedings of the Royal Society, the Philosophical Magazine, the London Mathematical Society Proceedings, and his admirable lectures on the Polarisation of Light, reprinted in the 'Nature' series (1874), are known to all students. Spottiswoode was treasurer of the British Association (1861-74), of the Royal Institution (1865-73), and of the Royal Society (1871-78); president of Section A (1865), and of the British Association itself (1878), of the London Mathematical Society (1870-72), and of the Royal Society from 1879 till his death, which took place at London, June 27, 1883. Further honours were the degrees of LL.D. from Cambridge, Dublin, and Edinburgh, and D.C.L. from Oxford. For a brief memoir and a list of his writings, see Nature for April 26, 1883.