A1TNIVT3RSAET ADDKESS OF THE PRESIDENT. XXIX 



THE ANNIVERSAEY ADDEESS OE THE PRESIDENT, 



Waeington W. Smyth, Esq., E.E.S. 



It is now my painful task, before proceeding to other subjects, to 

 .lay before you a sketch of the life and work of the numerous emi- 

 nent men whom, during the last year, death has removed from our 

 ranks. 



William Hopkins, M.A., LL.D., E.R.S., for many years a Eellow 

 of the Society, and in 1851 and 1852 its President, died on the 13th 

 October, 1866, in his seventy-third year. His early education was 

 desultory, and his father objected to his leaving home for a public 

 school ; but at the age of fourteen he read the first book of Euclid 

 with the interest, he afterwards said, that other boys would have 

 felt in an exciting fiction. He was, however, for the present to 

 . ^PP^y to other pursuits, went to learn practical farming in I^orfolk, 

 and, being left a competency by his father, took an extensive farm in 

 Suffolk. In this occupation, which lasted for some years, he was 

 unsuccessful ; and at length, collecting the remnant of his property, 

 he entered himself at St. Peter's College, Cambridge, at the mature 

 age of thirty. And now his mathematical talent shone out : he took 

 his degree in 1827 as 7th wrangler, and at once became remarkable 

 as a private tutor. He was shortly afterward elected one of the 

 Esquire Bedells of the University, and married the daughter of the 

 late John Boys,'M.D. The success of his tuition was extraordinary : 

 for very many years a large proportion of those who came out as 

 high Wranglers had read vdth Hopkins. 



On the value of this part of our deceased friend's career I cannot 

 do better than transcribe from a letter of condolence written to 

 Mrs. Hopkins by a mathematician of great eminence, and kindly sent 

 by that lady for my perusal : — " If I admired Mr. Hopkins at first 

 with the grateful feelings of a pupil, in later years I have been able 

 to estimate better what he did for Cambridge. When he began 

 tuition the reading, I believe, was somewhat unsystematic and in a 

 transition state, as portions of continental works were being infused 

 into the older style of English educational mathematics. When 

 Mr. Hopkins therefore had for so many years the guidance of those 

 who soon became themselves the guides and examiners of their 

 juniors, we can appreciate what we owe to him in the method in 

 which subjects are treated now. But he had a higher merit yet, I 

 think— in his teaching us to read our subjects in such an honest, 

 thorough way. He tried to raise us above the mercenary spirit of 

 speculating on portions likely to tell in examinations, and led us to 

 read for a more generous and honourable purpose. How effectually 

 he thus brought his pupils to success in the Senate House I need not 

 record ; but in a moral point of view, in the formation of character, 

 he was doing better for us than that — in holding before us higher 

 purposes of study than the academic distinctions of the day. Thus 

 his own noble spirit came out in his teaching, and could not fail to 

 influence the pupils at his side," 



