144 Britain's Heritage of Science 



post a -year after he had graduated at Cambridge as fourth 

 wrangler. De Morgan, the son of a Colonel in the Indian 

 Army, was born at Madras, but brought to England as a 

 child. He combined exceptional mathematical talents, 

 inherited from his mother, with great powers of exposition, 

 and his lectures attracted many men of distinction. Original 

 in his views and his methods, and possessing great strength 

 of character, he followed the dictates of his conscience 

 without regard to consequences. Shortly after his appoint- 

 ment at University College, he sent in his resignation 

 because a^colleague, the Professor of Anatomy, had been 

 dismissed without assigned cause. He subsequently con- 

 sented to be re-appointed when the regulations had been 

 altered so as to prevent a repetition of similar incidents. 

 Ultimately he severed his connexion with University College 

 because the governing body took too narrow a view of the 

 religious neutrality of the college, and refused to appoint 

 Dr. Martineau to one of its Chairs on the ground that he 

 was pledged to Unitarianism. But we are here concerned 

 with his scientific productions. His work on the Differential 

 Calculus is one of those rare books which never seem to 

 become antiquated. Its introductory chapter gives us what 

 is probably the best exposition of the fundamental principles 

 of the Calculus that has yet been given. De Morgan's 

 " Budget of Paradoxes," reprinted after his death from 

 articles that had appeared in the Athenceum, contains, 

 besides an historical account of the vagaries of circle-squaring 

 and the trisection of angles, the views of the author on many 

 subjects. Like many mathematicians, De Morgan was 

 devoted to music ; he was a good player on the flute, and had 

 also a talent for drawing caricatures. 



Thomas Graham (1805-1869), the first of the series of 

 great chemists who have adorned the laboratories at Gower 

 Street, commenced his studies at Glasgow, and after com- 

 pleting them under Hope and Leslie at Edinburgh, returned 

 to the former city, where for a short time he held the Chair 

 of Chemistry. When in 1837 he was called to University 

 College, London, as Professor of Chemistry, he had already 

 established his reputation as an original investigator. His 

 chief interest was centred in the study of those physical and 



