y Anniversary Address by Sir William Huggins. [Nov. 30, 
Of some of them only, on this occasion, will time permit me to give expression, 
on your behalf, to a few words of appreciation of their work, and of deep 
sorrow at their loss. 
In your name I place a wreath, emblem of our respect and of our deep 
sorrow, to the memory of our late Fellow and Copley-Medallist, the revered 
Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, who passed away at the ripe age of 
eighty-four years. George Salmon was as remarkable in the influence of his 
powerful personality, as in his works, by which he extended and adorned two 
domains of thought, as diverse as mathematics and theology. It is given to 
few men to achieve a European reputation as an investigator of the first rank 
in two distinct provinces of knowledge. 
Born and educated in the City of Cork, he matriculated.at Trinity College, 
Dublin, at the early age of fourteen. After a brilliant undergraduate course, 
he took his degree in 1838, and was elected a Fellow in 1841. Devoting 
himself to the study of pure mathematics, he produced a series of books, now 
accounted as classics In every university of the world, which were of very 
great service in promoting the advancement of that science. Their value was 
shown by the number of their editions, by their translation into several 
languages, and by the honours they procured for their author.. In his 
“Lessons Introductory to the Study of the Modern Higher Algebra,” which 
grew in subsequent editions until it became a treatise, he made accessible to 
the student the recent researches of the previous twenty years into the theory 
of transformations of binary forms. 
Following the traditions of the Dublin School of Mathematics, he gave wide 
scope in all his books to geometrical method, often relieving the monotony of 
pages of analysis by the introduction of a brilliant geometrical proof. 
* In 1866, on the preferment of Dr. Butcher, Salmon was appointed 
Regius Professor of Divinity, from which time he ceased to work at 
mathematics, except in an occasional way at the Theory of Numbers. 
This is not the place for a consideration of his contributions to theological 
literature, nor of his great influence in the Church in Ireland at a time of 
exceptional difficulty. One important aspect of his theological labours is 
expressed by the title which was given to him of “malleus Germanorwin.” 
In the year 1888 he was appointed by the Lord Lieutenant to the post of 
Provost of Trinity College. His large sympathy with all sorts and conditions 
of men, his unaffected dignity, his genial humour, and his kind heart, gave to 
his masterful tenure of the office of Provost an influence probably unparalleled 
in the history of Trinity College. 
Not Trinity College alone, but all Dublin was proud of him. Men or all 
