XV 



quarter of a century. On the 9th of June in that year a great 

 assembly gathered to see these degrees conferred upon the recipients. 

 It need hardly be said that the men singled out for honour received 

 ovations on being presented ; among the most enthusiastic ovations 

 were those accorded to the three professors. 



Nor were external bodies and learned societies, both at home and 

 abroad, backward in recognising the merits of his work ; the honours 

 he received were numerous and came from all quarters. Honorary 

 degrees were conferred upon him by several universities as well as 

 his own, among them being Oxford, Dublin, Edinburgh, Gottingen, 

 Heidelberg, Leyden, and Bologna. President Carnot nominated him 

 an Officer of the Legion of Honour. He was either a Fellow or a 

 foreign corresponding member of most of the scientific societies of 

 the Continent, among them being the French Institute, the 

 Academies of Berlin, Gottingen, St. Petersburg, Milan, Rome, 

 Leyden, Upsala, and Hungary. He was also a Fellow of the Royal 

 Society of Edinburgh, of the Royal Irish Academy, and of the Royal 

 Astronomical Society. He had been President of the Cambridge 

 Philosophical Society, and he sat on its Council for many years ; also 

 President of the London Mathematical Society, and of the Royal 

 Astronomical Society. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society 

 on 3rd June, 1852, and he served as a member of its Council for six 

 periods of office. He received from the Royal Society a Royal medal in 

 1859 and in 1882 the Copley Medal, the highest scientific distinction 

 it is in its power to bestow. When the De Morgan Medal was insti- 

 tuted in connection with the London Mathematical Society, the first 

 award was fitly made to Cayley. And from Leyden he received the 

 Huyghens Medal. 



Mention should be made of one other honour which he received ' 

 it is of a kind seldom conferred. The high opinion of his work 

 which was held in America was indicated by an invitation in 1881 to 

 deliver a course of lectures in the Johns Hopkins University, Balti- 

 more, where his friend and fellow investigator, Sylvester, was then 

 professor. He accepted the invitation, and left England in Decem- 

 ber of that year. During the next five months he lectured on 

 Abelian and Theta Functions ; the substance of these lectures 

 was incorporated in a memoir subsequently published in the 

 ' American Journal of Mathematics.'* He returned to England in 

 June, 1882, bringing back pleasant remembrances of kindnesses and 

 friendships. 



His life, spent in mathematical research and in the quiet round of 

 activity in the University, offered little of either interest or incident 

 to make his name known by the outside world to the same extent or 



* Vol. 5 (1883), pp. 137179; yol. 7 (1885), pp. 101167. 



