

OBITUARY NOTICES OF FELLOWS DECEASED. 



In ALEXANDER JOHN ELLIS the Society have lost an earnest and 

 useful worker in several important branches of knowledge. He was 

 a learned mathematician, an accomplished scholar, an original 

 thinker, an indefatigable investigator, and an industrious writer; 

 and his contributions to some of the more obscure and unfamiliar 

 subjects of scientific study have been numerous, varied, and remark- 

 able. 



He was born at Hoxton in 1814, and his original name was Sharpe, 

 having been changed to Ellis in 1825. It is believed that this was 

 done in consequence of a bequest, made by a relative, to enable him 

 to devote his life to study and research, unhampered by pecuniary 

 cares ; and if this was so, he certainly carried out most faithfully his 

 part of the bargain. 



He was placed first at Shrewsbury School, and then at Eton, after 

 which he went to Cambridge, being elected a Scholar of Trinity 

 College in 1835. Here he worked with zeal, bearing his specified 

 career in mind, and in 1837 he came out Sixth Wrangler and First 

 of the Second Class in Classics. He entered the Middle Temple as 

 a student, and remained a member ; but he appears to have had no 

 serious intention of following the legal profession, and he was never 

 called to the Bar. 



The work of Mr. Ellis's life, as exhibited in his multifarious and 

 voluminous writings, has been so extensive that it is impossible 

 here to do it full justice. It must suffice to indicate some of the 

 principal subjects to which his attention was given. 



He first made himself known as a writer on Mathematics, having 

 published, in 1843, a translation of Professor Martin Ohm's " Geist 

 der Mathematischen Analysis." He afterwards continued to write, 

 from time to time, papers on mathematical subjects, mostly published 

 in the ' Proceedings of the Royal Society.' Many of these were of a 

 somewhat abstruse character, as " On the Laws of Operation and the 

 Systemization of Mathematics," 1859 ; " On Scalar and Clinant 

 Algebraical Coordinate Geometry," 1860, 1861, and 1863; "On 

 Stigmatics," 1865 and 1866: while others were more practical, such 

 as " Problems in Hypsometry," 1865, and " On the calculation of 

 Logarithms," 1881. He also published, in 1874, a separate work con- 

 sisting of five consecutive essays, and entitled " Algebra identified 

 with Geometry." 



VOL. XLIX. 6 



