4se 



WALLACE, WILLIAM. 



WALLENSTEIN. 



400 



gallows 011 the 23rd of August 1305, after which he was " drawn and 

 quartered " the usual punishment of persons convicted of treason. 

 His right arm was set up at Newcastle, his left at Berwick, his right 

 leg at Perth, his left at Aberdeen ; his head on London Bridge. 

 Wallace's daughter by the heiress of Lamington married Sir William 

 Bailie of Hoprig, whose descendants through her inherited the estate 

 of Lamington. 



WALLACE, WILLIAM, a mathematician of eminence, was born 

 on the 23rd of September 1768, at Dysart, in Fifeshire, N.B., in which 

 town his father, a manufacturer of leather, had settled. He received 

 the rudiments of education at a dame's school in his native town, and 

 at seven years of age he was sent to a school in which, under a master, 

 he acquired the power of writing ; but to his father he was indebted 

 for instruction in arithmetic. In 1784 his father, after the failure of 

 his business at Dysart, having gone with his family to reside at Edin- 

 burgh, he was placed with a bookbinder in that city, to whom soon 

 afterwards he was bound as an apprentice. Without any encourage- 

 ment from his master, the youth derived some advantage from the 

 opportunities which occasionally presented themselves of perusing the 

 books which he was employed to bind ; and having besides found 

 means to purchase some mathematical works, he succeeded in making 

 himself master of their contents. It is said that before he was 

 twenty years of oge he had acquired a knowledge of elementary 

 geometry and trigonometry, algebra with fluxions, conic sections, and 

 astronomy. 



About the same time he became acquainted with a man who was 

 employed by Dr. Robison as an assistant in making the experiments 

 by which the subjects of his lectures were exemplified ; and when the 

 term of his apprenticeship expired he accepted the offer of this person 

 to introduce him to that distinguished professor. Dr. Eobison finding, 

 after an examination, that the young man had attained to considerable 

 proficiency in mathematical science, and being made acquainted with 

 his humble condition in life, kindly permitted him to attend the course 

 of lectures on natural philosophy which was then about to commence, 

 of which permission he thankfully availed himself. Dr. Robison soon 

 afterwards proposed to him to give lessons in geometry to one of his 

 own pupils; he also introduced him to Professor Playfair, who, taking 

 an interest in his welfare, contributed both by advice and by loans of 

 books to facilitate his progress in acquiring a knowledge of the higher 

 branches of mathematics. In the hope of obtaining more time for the 

 prosecution of his studies, Wallace accepted the situation of ware- 

 houseman in a printing-office ; and while engaged in this employment 

 he acquired, with the assistance of a student in the university, a 

 knowledge of Latin, and soon afterwards he began the study of the 

 French language. He subsequently became a shopman to one of the 

 principal booksellers of Edinburgh, and while holding this situation 

 he gave lessons occasionally in the evenings in mathematics. 



In 1793 his increasing love for science, and a desire to have greater 

 opportunities of cultivating it, led him to resign his employment and 

 become a private teacher of mathematics ; he however followed this 

 occupation about a year only (during which time he attended the 

 lectures of Professor Playfair and a course of lectures on chemistry), 

 for in 1794 he was appointed assistant teacher of mathematics in the 

 Academy at Perth. He married soon afterwards, and during the 

 vacations he regularly visittd Edinburgh, where his talents procured 

 him an introduction to the distinguished scientific men of that city. 

 Mr. Wallace continued to fulfil the duties of his appointment at Perth 

 during nine years: but in 1803 be was appointed one of the mathe- 

 matical masters in the Koyul Military College, which had then recently 

 been formed at Great Marlow, in Buckinghamshire. The institution 

 was afterwards removed to Sandhurst, in Berkshire ; and at both 

 places he performed the duties of his post greatly to the satisfaction of 

 the persons in authority. In 1818 it was determined that a half-yearly 

 course of lectures on practical astronomy should be given for the 

 benefit of the students, and that these should be combined with 

 instruction on the manner of making celestial observations ; for these 

 purposes the plan of a small observatory was furnished by. Dr. 

 Robison, of Oxford , and Mr. Wallace, who was appointed to deliver 

 the lectures, superintended the details of ita construction. Such 

 instruments were provided as suffice for the object proposed ; and it 

 may be said that the establishment of a course of astronomy at the 

 college has contributed materially to the efficiency of military officers 

 holding staff appointments abroad. 



In the following year the death of Professor Playfair and the appoint- 

 ment of Mr. (Sir John) Leslie to succeed him in the chair of Natural 

 Philosophy at Edinburgh, left a vacancy in the chair of Mathematics ; 

 and Mr. Wallace, whose highest ambition had always been to obtain a 

 professorship in a Scottish university, immediately became a candidate 

 for the post. He was elected, after a severe contest, by a majority of 

 votes, and he held the appointment till 1838, when, on account of ill 

 health, he resigned it. On this occasion the university conferred on 

 him the honorary title of Doctor of Laws, and he received from 

 government a pension in consideration of his attainments in science, 

 as well as of his services in the Military College and at the University 

 of Edinburgh. 



Mr. Wallace died at Edinburgh, respected and regretted, on the 

 28th of April 1843, and consequently in the seventy-fifth year of his 

 age, after an illness which for several years had prevented hin from 



entering into society. He had been a Fellow of the Royal Astrono- 

 mical Society from the time of its formation : he was also a Fellow of 

 the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a corresponding member of the 

 Institution of Civil Engineers, an honorary member of the Cambridge 

 Philosophical Society, and a few weeks before his death he was elected 

 an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy. 



In 1796 he presented to the Royal Society of Edinburgh his first 

 paper, which was entitled ' Geometrical Poriems, with Examples of 

 their Applications to the Solution of Problems;' it contains some new 

 porisrnatic propositions, investigated according to the method of the 

 ancient geometers, and affords proof of considerable inventive power. 

 About the same time he contributed the article 'Porism ' to the third 

 edition of the ' Encyclopaedia Britannica.' In 1802 he presented to the 

 Royal Society of Edinburgh a paper containing a new method of 

 expressing the co-efficients in the development of the formula which 

 represents the mutual perturbation of two planets ; and, in an appen- 

 dix, he gave a quickly converging series for the rectification of an 

 ellipse. In one point the subject of .the paper had been previously 

 investigated by Le Gendre, but the works of that great mathematician 

 were then little known in this country, and apparently Mr. Wallace 

 had not seen them. Six years afterwards he presented to the same 

 society a third paper, entitled ' New Series for the Quadrature of the 

 Conic Sections, and the Computation of Logarithms,' which contains 

 some remarkable formulae for the rectification of circular arcs and the 

 sectors of equilateral hyberbolas, and for computing logarithms. In 

 1823 he presented a paper on the 'Investigation of Formulas for finding 

 the Logarithms of Trigonometrical Quantities from one another;' and 

 in 1831 one entitled 'Account of the Invention of the Pantograph, 

 and a description of the Eidograph,' the latter being an instrument 

 which he had invented in 1821. In 1839 he gave a paper on the 

 'Analogous Properties of Elliptic and Hyperbolic Sectors;' and his 

 last contribution to the society was one entitled ' Solution of a Func- 

 tional Equation, with its Application to the Parallelogram of Force?, 

 and the Curve of Equilibration :' this paper, which was published in 

 vol. xh'. of the 'Transactions,' contains a table to ten decimal places 

 of the values of the ordinates and arcs of a catenary. Mr. Wallace 

 contributed to the ' Transactions of the Royal Astronomical Society ' 

 a paper entitled ' Two Elementary Solutions of Kepler's Problem by 

 the Angular Calculus,' which is published in the volume for 1836; 

 and in the sixth volume of the ' Transactions of the Cambridge Philo- 

 sophical Society ' there is a paper by him under the title of ' Geo- 

 metrical Theorems and Formulae, particularly applicable to some 

 Geodetical Problems." In 1838, while suffering from sickness, he 

 composed a work on the same subject, which he dedicated to his friend 

 Colonel Colby. 



In his early life Mr. Wallace was a contributor to Leybourne's 

 'Mathematical Repository ' and ' The Gentleman's Mathematical Com- 

 panion;' he also wrote the principal mathematical articles for the 

 ' Edinburgh Encyclopaedia,' and for the fourth edition of the ' Ency- 

 clopaedia Britannica.' 



WALLENSTEIN. ALBRECHT WENZEL EUSEBIUS, DUKE OF MECK- 

 LENBURG, FRIEDLAND, and SAOAN, COUNT OF WALDSTEIN, commonly 

 called WALLENSTEIN, was the third son of Wilhelm, baron von 

 Waldstein, and Margaret Smirricka, baroness Smirricz. He was born 

 in his father's castle of Hermanic, in Bohemia, on the 15th of 

 September 1583. The family of Waldstein, as the name indicates, is 

 of German origin, and had belonged to the high nobility (Herrenstand) 

 of Bohemia from the 13th century. In 1290 a knight or lord named 

 Waldstein appeared at the court of King Ottokar of Bohemia, accom- 

 panied by his four-and-twenty sons, who, down to the youngest, bore 

 coats of arms and the armour of knights. 



From his earliest youth Albrecht von Waldstein showed a spirit of 

 independence and haughtiness which often exposed him to the 

 reproaches of his parents. He was only seven when, being chastised 

 by his mother for a boyish fault, he cried out indignantly, " Why, am 

 I not a prince 1 nobody should venture to flog me ; " and his uncle 

 having once reproached him with being as proud as a prince, he coolly 

 answered, "Was nicht ist kann noch werd en " (What is not may be 

 yet). His delight was to be in the company of the military friends of 

 his father. He lost his mother in 1593, and his father in 1595, and, 

 although he was a younger son, he inherited considerable estates. 

 The family of Waldstein belonged to the established Protestant church 

 of Bohemia (the Utraquists) ; but this circumstance did not prevent 

 Albrecht's uncle and guardian, Albrecht Slawata, lord of Chlum, a 

 Roman Catholic, from putting his ward under the Jesuits at Olmiitz, 

 where he was to receive his education. The Jesuits soon succeeded in 

 converting young Albrecht, an event which has been adorned with 

 much fable. After having finished his education he set out for Italy, 

 accompanied by Peter Verdungus, the friend of Kepler, a good mathe- 

 matician and a famous astrologer. He continued his studies at Pavia 

 and Bologna, where Argoli, the astronomer, taught him the principles 

 of the Cabbala. Besides the Cabbala and astrology, Albrecht acquired 

 a thorough knowledge of the ancient and almost all European lan- 

 guages ; of the Roman, the canon, and the German law ; and of 

 mathematics and other sciences connected with the military art, 

 which was always the chief object of his studies. Before he went^to 

 Italy he stayed some time in the University of Altdorf, where he si 

 nalised himself by many extravagances, if we may trust the stcriea 



