NATURE 



SCIENTIFIC WORTHIES. 



XXV.— James Joseph Sylvester. 



TAMES JOSEPH SYLVESTER, born in London 

 J on September 3, 1814, is the sixth and youngest 

 son of the late Abraham Joseph Sylvester, formerly of 

 Liverpool,^ He was educated at two private schools 

 in London, and at the Royal Institution, Liverpool, 

 whence he proceeded in due course of time to St. 

 John's College, Cambridge. In these early days he 

 manifested considerable aptitude for mathematics, and 

 so it was not matter for surprise that he came out in the 

 Tripos Examination of 1837 as Second Wrangler ; being 

 incapacitated, by the fact of his Jewish origin, from taking 

 his degree, he was not able to compete for either of the 

 Smith's Prizes. In more enlighted times (1872) he had 

 the degrees of B.A. and M.A., by accumulation, conferred 

 upon him, and received therewith the honour of a Latin 

 speech from the Public Orator. He himself says : " I 

 am perhaps the only man in England who am a full 

 (voting) Master of Arts for the three Universities of 

 Dublin, Cambridge, and Oxford, having received that 

 degree from these Universities in the order above given : 

 (. from Dublin, by ad eiindem ; from Cambridge, <?^ Wi'r//rt ; 

 f from Oxford, by decree." He is now D.C.L. of Oxford, 

 LL.D. of Dublin and Edinburgh, and Hon. Fellow of St. 

 John's College, Cambridge. It is still open for him to 

 receive yet higher recognition from his own alma mater. 

 Prof. Sylvester became a student of the Inner Temple 

 July 29, 1846, and was called to the Bar on November 22, 

 1850.2 He has been Professor of Natural Philosophy at 

 University College, London ; of Mathematics at the 

 University of Virginia, U.S.A. ;3 then ten years later 

 Professor at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich ; 

 and again, after a five years' interval, Professor of Mathe- 

 matics at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 

 U.S.A., from its foundation in 1877. Finally, in December 

 1883, he was elected Savilian Professor of Geometry at 

 Oxford, in succession to Prof. Henry Smith.'' His first 

 printed paper was on Fresnel's optical theory (in the 

 Phil. Mag., 1837). 



We can here only briefly allude to a communication 

 which was accompanied by many important results : we 

 refer to the Friday evening address (January 23, 1874) to 

 the Royal Institution, "On Recent Discoveries in Mech- 

 anical Conversion of Motion." He says : — " It would 

 be difficult to quote any other discovery which opens out 

 such vast and varied horizons as this of Peaucellier's, — in 

 one direction, descending to the wants of the workshop, 

 the simplification of the steam-engine, the revolution- 

 izing of the mill-wright's trade, the amehoration of garden- 



' Foster's " Hand-b ok cf Men at the Bar " ' Foster, I.e. 



3 The late Prof. Key, of University College and School, was the first 

 occupant of the Chair, founded by Mr. Jeflerson, once President of the 

 United States, in 1824. 



4 He Commences his Oxford lecture (Naturk, vol. xxxiii. p. 222), of date 

 Decemberii, 1885. with the words : "' It is now two years and seven days since 

 a message by the Atlantic cable containing the single word ' elected ' reached 

 me in Baltimore inform. ng me that I had been appointed Savilian Professor 

 of Ge^metry in Oxford, so that for three weeks I was in the unique position 



cf filling the post and drawing the pay of Professor of Mathematics in each 

 of two Universities." 



Vol. XXXIX.— No. iooi. 



pumps, and other domestic conveniences (the sUn of 

 science glorifies all it shines upon) and in the other, 

 soaring to the sublimest heights of the most advanced 

 doctrines of modern analysis, lending aid to, and throw- 

 ing light from a totally unexpected quarter on the re- 

 searches of such men as Abel, Riemann, Clebsch, 

 Grassmann, and Cayley. Its head towers above the 

 clouds, while its feet plunge into the bowels of the earth." 

 The only works that Prof. Sylvester his published, we 

 believe, are : (i) "A Probationary Lecture on Geometry, 

 delivered before the Gresham Committee and the Mem- 

 bers of the Common Council of the City of London, 

 December 4, 1854," a slight thing which had to be written 

 and delivered at a few hours' notice ; (2) " Laws of 

 Verse," i8;o ; (3) several short poems, sonnets, and trans- 

 lations, which have appeared in our columns and elsewhere. 

 Our notice would be incomplete without some record of 

 the honours that have been conferred upon Dr. Sylvester. 

 He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on April 25, 

 1839 ; has received a Royal Medal (i860) and the Copley 

 Medal (1880), this latter rarely awarded, we believe, to a 

 pure mathematician. On this last occasion, Mr. Spottis- 

 woode accompanied the presentation with the words, 

 " His extensive and profound researches in pure mathe- 

 matics, especially his contributions to the theory of 

 invariants and covariants, to the theory of numbers and 

 to modern geometry, may be regarded as fully establish- 

 ing Mr. Sylvester's claim to the award." 'he is a Fellow 

 of New College, Oxford ; Foreign Associate of the United 

 States National Academy of Sciences ; Foreign Member 

 of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Gottingen, of the 

 Royal Academy of Sciences of Naples, and of the 

 Academy of Sciences of Boston ; Corresponding Member 

 of the Institute of France, of the Imperial Academy of 

 Science of St. Petersburg, of the Royal Academy of 

 Science of Berlin, of the Lyncei of Rome, of the Istituto 

 Lombardo, and of the Socidtd Philomathique. He has 

 been long connected with the editorial staff of the 

 (Quarterly Journal of Mathematics (under one or another of 

 its titles), and was the first editor of, and is a considerable 

 contributor to, \}[it. American Journal of Mathematics ; and 

 he was at one time Examiner in Mathematics and Natural 

 Philosophy in the University of London. He was not an 

 original member of the London Mathematical Society 

 (founded January 16, 1865), but was elected a member on 

 June 19, 1865, Vice-President on January 15, 1866, and suc- 

 ceeded Prof. De Morgan as the second President on 

 November 8, 1866. The Society showed its recognition 

 of his great services to them and to mathematical science 

 generally by awarding him its De Morgan Gold Medal in 

 November 1887. Wherever Dr. Sylvester goes, there is 

 sure to be mathematical activity ; and the latest proof 

 of this is the formation, during the last term at Oxford, 

 of a Mathematical Society, which promises, we hear 

 without surprise, to do much for the advancement of 

 mathematical science there. 



The writings of Sylvester date from the year 1837 ; 

 the number of them in the Royal Society Index up 

 to the year 1863 is 112, in the next ten years 38, and in 

 the forthcoming volume 81, making 231 for the years 

 1837 to 1883: the number of more recent papers is 



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