OBITUARY NOTICES OF FELLOWS DECEASED. 



In the decease of Professor "William Stanley Jevons, science and 

 philosophy, both, have suffered a great loss. Since the departure of 

 Boole and De Morgan — names which are ever on the tongue of 

 philosophical mathematicians — no one has taken a more prominent 

 part in the cultivation of symbolical logic than the accomplished 

 man whose untimely death we have now to deplore. To the general 

 public Professor Jevons was best known, perhaps, by his researches 

 on our coal supply, his works on political economy, and his papers 

 on various social questions of the day. His text-books for beginners 

 have had an extensive circulation, and have proved highly serviceable 

 to the class for which they were intended. His essays on currency 

 and finance, on capital and labour, and on questions affecting the 

 social life of the people, are also well known. But his reputation as 

 a thinker and writer may be permitted to rest on his investigations 

 into the principles of science and his contributions to a calculus 

 of deductive reasoning. Bringing to his studies and researches not 

 only a well furnished mind, but also a rare faculty for experiment 

 and a taste for mechanical contrivances, he was enabled to embody 

 the results of his intellectual labours in forms at once original and 

 attractive. The instrument which he invented for the mechanical 

 performance of logical inference, an account of which is given in the 

 Transactions of our Society, could never have been devised by a man 

 who was only a pure mathematician, or a pure logician. It is the 

 " fruit of the grafting of an experimental genius on a philosophical 

 genius." This peculiarity gave to his writings a special interest and 

 value, and secured for them a wide circle of readers. 



William Stanley Jevons was born at Liverpool on the 1st of 

 September, 1835. His father, Thomas Jevons, was an iron merchant 

 in that city, and his mother who wrote some poems, and edited the 

 " Sacred Offering," was the eldest daughter of William Roscoe, the 

 author of the well-known biographies of Lorenzo de Medici and Leo X. 

 His earlier education was received at the High School of the Me- 

 chanics' Institution, and at a private school in his native city. After- 

 wards he was sent to London, where for twelve months he attended 

 the classes of University College School. At the age of sixteen he 

 entered University College and commenced the usual course of study 

 in arts and sciences, matriculating in 1852 in London University 

 with honours in botany and chemistry. In 1853 he received, through 

 Mr. Graham, of the Mint, the appointment of Assayer to the Australian 



vol. xxxv. b 



