Clifford

Picture.

Among the most promising mathematicians produced in England in the 19th century, but one whose early death prevented the maturing of his genius, was William Kingdon Clifford 1< /A>. He was educated at King's College, London (1860-1863) and Trinity College, Cambridge. At the university his mathematical genius was at once recognized, and in 1868 he was elected to a fellowship at Trinity. In 1871 he was made professor of applied mathematics at University College, London, and three years later was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was among the first to protest against the analytic bias of the Cambridge mathematicians, and he assisted in introducing into England the grap hic methods of Mobius and other German writers. His most important works were in relation to Riemann's surfaces, biquaternions, and the classification of loci. His Common Sense of the Exact Sciences is a classic on the foundations of mathematics, and suggests, as other works (including those of Copernicus and Kepler) had already done, the idea of relativity in all physical measurements. His Mathematical Papers, edited by R. Tucker, appeared in 1882 2.

(Smith, pp. 467-468.)