Biographical Notes 71 



On November 22nd, Professor W. K. Clifford and Dr. 

 Allen Thomson were elected to fill the above-named vacancy 

 and that caused by the death of Mr. Gassiot, an original 

 member. 



WILLIAM KINGDON CLIFFORD, a thinker of great originality, was 

 born at Exeter on May 4th, 1845, and at an early age showed excep- 

 tional aptitude for classics and literature as well as for mathematics. 

 Proceeding to Trinity College, Cambridge, he graduated in 1867 

 as second wrangler, obtaining the second Smith's Prize. Soon 

 after he had been elected to a fellowship, his views on politics and 

 religion were completely changed. In 1871 he left Cambridge to 

 become Professor of Applied Mathematics at University College, 

 London, where he proved to be a most effective lecturer, and was 

 equally at his ease with the most advanced thinkers and with 

 children. Elected F.R.S. in 1874, pulmonary disease showed itself 

 in the spring of 1876, and, after more than one absence in the hope 

 of regaining health, he died in Madeira on March 3rd, 1879, having 

 marked by his suggestive books and papers an epoch in the history 

 of mathematics in England. 



PROFESSOR ALLEN THOMSON, a physician's son, was born in Edin- 

 burgh on April 2nd, 1809, and educated at that University, where 

 he took the M.D. degree in 1830, and at Paris. After holding 

 Professorships in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, he resigned 

 the last in 1877, when he settled in London. Elected F.R.S. in 

 1848, he received an honorary LL.D. from Edinburgh and Glasgow, 

 and D.C.L. from Oxford, and was also President of the British 

 Association in 1877. He was regarded as the first of the great 

 biological teachers of the nineteenth century, who made a special 

 study of embryology, and showed a clear critical faculty, an innate 

 love of truth, and was eminently sound, but perhaps almost too 

 cautious. He died in London on March 2ist, 1884. 



1878. At the Anniversary Meeting on April 29th, two 

 vacancies made by the resignation of Professor W. H. Miller 

 and the death of Dr. Thomas Thomson were filled by the 

 election of Professor Maskelyne and Lord Rayleigh. 



MERVYN HERBERT NEVIL STORY MASKELYNE, grandson of an 

 Astronomer Royal, was born at Basset Down House, Wiltshire, 

 on September 3rd, 1823, and graduated with Mathematical Honours 

 from Wadham College, Oxford. After studying for the Bar,, he 

 gave up law for science, and began lectures on mineralogy at Oxford 

 in 1850, of which he was made Professor in 1856. Next year he 

 was appointed Keeper of Minerals in the British Museum, where 

 he greatly augmented the collection, especially of meteorites, to 



