George Salmon | |
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| 32nd Provost of Trinity College Dublin | |
| In office 1 June 1888 – 22 January 1904 | |
| Preceded by | John Hewitt Jellett |
| Succeeded by | Anthony Traill |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1819-09-25)25 September 1819 Cork, Ireland |
| Died | 22 January 1904(1904-01-22) (aged 84) Dublin, Ireland |
| Resting place | Mount Jerome Cemetery, Dublin, Ireland |
| Spouse | |
| Alma mater | Trinity College, Dublin (B.A., 1839) |
| Awards |
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George SalmonFBA FRS FRSE (25 September 1819 – 22 January 1904) was a distinguished and influential Irishmathematician andAnglicantheologian. After working inalgebraic geometry for two decades, Salmon devoted the last forty years of his life to theology. His entire career was spent atTrinity College Dublin, having served as the 32ndProvost of the university from 1888 to 1904.
Salmon was born inCork in 1819, to Michael Salmon and Helen Weekes (the daughter of the Reverend Edward Weekes). During his boyhood in Cork, where his father Michael was a linen merchant, he attendedHamblin and Porter's School there before starting atTrinity College Dublin in 1833.
In 1837, he won a scholarship and graduated from Trinity in 1839 withfirst-class honours in mathematics. In 1841, at the age of 21, he attained a paid fellowship and teaching position in mathematics at Trinity. In 1845, he was additionally appointed to a position in theology at the university, after having been ordained a deacon in 1844 and a priest in theChurch of Ireland in 1845.
He remained at Trinity for the rest of his career.
He died at theProvost's House on 22 January 1904 and was buried inMount Jerome Cemetery,Dublin.[1] He was an avid reader throughout his life, and his obituary refers to him as "specially devoted to the novels of Jane Austen."[2]
In 1844, he married Frances Anne Salvador, daughter of Rev J L Salvador of Staunton-upon-Wye in Herefordshire, with whom he had six children, of whom only two survived him.
In the late 1840s and the 1850s, Salmon was in regular and frequent communication withArthur Cayley andJ. J. Sylvester. The three of them, together with a small number of other mathematicians (includingCharles Hermite), were developing a system for dealing with n-dimensional algebra and geometry. During this period Salmon published about 36 papers in journals. In these papers for the most part he solved narrowly defined, concrete problems in algebraic geometry, as opposed to more broadly systematic or foundational questions. But he was an early adopter of the foundational innovations of Cayley and the others. In 1859, he published the bookLessons Introductory to the Modern Higher Algebra (where the word "higher" means n-dimensional). This was for a while simultaneously the state-of-the-art and the standard presentation of the subject, and went through updated and expanded editions in 1866, 1876 and 1885, and was translated into German and French.
From 1858 to 1867, he was theDonegall Lecturer in Mathematics at Trinity.
Meanwhile, back in 1848, Salmon had published an undergraduate textbook entitledA Treatise on Conic Sections. This text remained in print for over fifty years, going through five updated editions in English, and was translated into German, French, Italian, and Japanese. Salmon himself did not participate in the expansions and updates of the later editions. The German version, which was a "free adaptation" byWilhelm Fiedler, was popular as an undergraduate text in Germany. Salmon also published two other mathematics texts,A Treatise on Higher Plane Curves (1852) andA Treatise on the Analytic Geometry of Three Dimensions (1862). These too were in print for a long time and went through a number of later editions, with Salmon delegating the work of the later editions to others.
In 1858, he was presented with theCunningham Medal of theRoyal Irish Academy. In June 1863, he was elected aFellow of the Royal Society followed in 1868 by the award of theirRoyal Medal "For his researches in analytical geometry and the theory of surfaces". In 1889 Salmon received theCopley Medal of the society, the highest honorary award in British science, but by then he had long since lost his interest in mathematics and science.
He was elected to honorary membership of theManchester Literary and Philosophical Society, in 1889,[3] and received honorary degrees from several universities, including that ofDoctor mathematicae (honoris causa) from theRoyal Frederick University on 6 September 1902, when they celebrated the centennial of the birth ofmathematicianNiels Henrik Abel.[4][5]
Salmon's theorem [ru] is named in honour of George Salmon.
From the early 1860s, Salmon was primarily occupied with theology. In 1866, he was appointedRegius Professor of Divinity at Trinity College, at which point he resigned from his position in the mathematics department at TCD. In 1871, he accepted an additional post of chancellor ofSt. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.
One of his early publications in theology was in 1853 as a contributor to a book of rebuttals to theTracts for the Times. Arguments against Roman Catholicism were a recurring theme in Salmon's theology and culminated in his widely read 1888 bookInfallibility of the Church in which he argued that certain beliefs of the Roman church were absurd, especially the beliefs in theinfallibility of the church and theinfallibility of the pope. Salmon also wrote books about eternal punishment, miracles, and interpretation of the New Testament. His bookAn Historical Introduction to the Study of the Books of the New Testament, which was widely read, is an account of the reception and interpretation of the gospels in the early centuries of Christianity as seen through the writings of leaders such asIrenaeus andEusebius.
Salmon was a keenchess player. He was a patron to the University Chess Club,[6] and was also the President of Dublin Chess Club from 1890–1903.[7] He participated in the secondBritish Chess Congress and had the honour of playing the chess prodigyPaul Morphy in Birmingham, England, on 27 August 1858.[8][9] He beatDaniel Harrwitz in an interesting game.[10]
Even in his bookInfallibility of the Church, Salmon mentions chess a few times:
Salmon was Provost of Trinity from 1888 until his death in 1904. The highlight of his career may have been when in 1892 he presided over the great celebrations marking the tercentenary of the College, which had been founded byQueen Elizabeth I in 1592.
In 1870, Trinity had introduced theExaminations for Women, following a request fromAlexandra College.[12] In 1880, whileHumphrey Lloyd was provost,Samuel Haughton,Anthony Traill,John Jellett and others proposed that degrees be open to women, on the same terms as men. Lloyd, as provost, was not a supporter, and the motion was defeated. In 1881, Jellett became provost, and a committee was set up in 1882 to investigate the matter, including future provosts Salmon and Traill, respectively opposing and supporting admission. Despite the support of the provost, the committee was not effective.
Salmon was provost during the campaign for admission by the Central Association of Irish Schoolmistresses (CAISM), in whichAlice Oldham was an important figure. Salmon and the board were not generally receptive to the campaign. While Salmon was a conservative, his strong opposition to the admission of women cannot be dismissed simply; he had been a member of the council of Alexandra College, had supported girls competing on equal terms with boys in Intermediate examinations and his daughter, from the provost's house, had acted as coordinator for the Examinations for Women and was a member of CAISM.[12][13] In 1896, all eight members of the board were over 70 years of age, but by 1901 retirements and deaths had resulted in the majority of the board being pro-admission.[14]
In 1902,John Mahaffy proposed that the time had come to take action on the issue of awarding degrees to women. This was passed by the board, and, though the motion was opposed by Salmon, a committee was set up to report, and by the end of the year the board resolved that theLord Lieutenant,William Ward should be petitioned to move the king to issue new Letters Patent for admission of Women.[12] In 1903, Ward replied, indicating that the agreement of the provost was essential before Letters Patent would be issued. Salmon wrote withdrawing his formal objections in July 1903. The Letters Patent were received by the board on 16 January 1904. This was Salmon's last board meeting.[12]
On 22 January 1904,Isabel Marion Weir Johnston became the first woman undergraduate to succeed in registering at Trinity, and by the end of the year, dozens of other women had done likewise.[15] She recalled, "When I arrived in Dublin 1904, I was informed that he [Salmon] had died that day, and the examination had to be put off until after the funeral."[16]
Salmon continued to attend board meetings up to his death.[17] At his death, Salmon had been a familiar figure in Trinity for over 62 years, and was held in affection even by those who disagreed with him.[14][17] Both Traill and Mahaffy were eager to succeed Salmon as provost, and were lobbying to secure the position on the day of his death. Just before his death, Salmon is said to have anticipated this in another apocryphal story. He dreamt that he was dead, and his funeral was processing across Front Square, followed by weeping Fellows and Scholars. His coffin was laid in the chapel, "and then", he said, "I sat up in my coffin, whereupon Mahaffy and Traill wept louder than ever".[14]
| Academic offices | ||
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| Preceded by | Provost of Trinity College Dublin 1888–1904 | Succeeded by |
