|
IVORY, JAMES, LL.D.—This
excellent mathematician was born at Dundee, in 1765. After he had attended
the public schools of his native town, until the usual course of an English
education was finished, his father, who was a watchmaker in Dundee, being
anxious that his son should be a minister, sent him to the university of St.
Andrews, to prosecute those studies which the church has appointed. He
entered the college at the age of fourteen, and continued there six years;
but of the various departments of study comprised within this course,
mathematics attracted his chief attention; and in this he made such
proficiency as to attract the notice of his fellow-students, as well as of
the Rev. John West, one of the professors, who encouraged and aided him in
his scientific pursuits. After these college terms had been finished, Ivory
spent two years at St. Andrews in the study of theology, and a third in
Edinburgh, where he had Sir John Leslie for his class-fellow. But on
completing his theological course, and leaving the university in 1786,
instead of becoming a licentiate of the church, as his father had proposed,
he became assistant teacher in a newly-established academy in Dundee, where
he continued three years, and afterwards engaged with some other persons in
a factory for spinning flax, which was erected at Douglastown, Forfarshire.
How this last occupation, of which he was chief superintendent, coincided
either with his previous studies as a theologian, or his predilections as a
mathematician, does not distinctly appear; but the result was a failure;
for, after fifteen years of trial, the company was dissolved in 1804, and
the factory closed. During all this period, Ivory had probably employed his
leisure in the study both of English and foreign works upon his favourite
science—pursuits not of a favourable nature certainly for the mechanical
operations of flax-spinning. He had done enough, however, at all events, to
show that his leanings were not towards the office of the ministry.
The next change that Mr. Ivory
underwent was of a more congenial character, for it was to a professorship of
mathematics in the Royal Military College, instituted a few years previous at
Marlow, in Buckinghamshire. Here he laboured with great assiduity in his new
charge, and afterwards at Sandhurst, Berkshire, when the college was removed to
that quarter. The manner in which he discharged the duties of his important
professorship not only met with the high approval of the governor of the
institution, but also the cordial esteem of the students, whom he was never
weary of instructing in a science so essential to the military profession. He
endeavoured, in his lessons, to simplify those demonstrations that had hitherto
been of too complex a character; and for the more effectual accomplishment of
this purpose, he also published, but without his name, an edition of "Euclid’s
Elements," in which the difficult problems were brought more within the reach of
ordinary understandings. So earnestly and indefatigably, indeed, were these
duties discharged, that in 1819 his health unfitted him for further public
exertion, and he resigned his chair in Sandhurst College before the time had
elapsed that entitled him to a retiring pension. But the value of his services
was so justly estimated, that the full pension was allowed him, with which he
retired into private life, in or near London, where he prosecuted his favourite
studies till the period of his death, which occurred on the 21st September,
1842, in the seventy-seventh year of his age.
Such were the few events of a
public nature that characterized the life of Professor Ivory; but his actions
are chiefly to be found in his scientific writings, which were highly estimated
by the mathematicians of his day. Of these we give the following brief
enumeration:—In 1796, 1799, and 1802, he sent three communications to the Royal
Society of Edinburgh. The first of these was entitled, "A New Series for the
Rectification of the Ellipse;" the second, "A New Method of Resolving Cubic
Equations;" and the third, "A New and Universal Solution of Kepler’s Problem."
To these succeeded, between the
years 1809 and 1839, fifteen papers, transmitted to the Royal Society of London,
and published in their "Transactions." The first of these, "On the Attractions
of Homogeneous Ellipsoids," possesses remarkable merit, in which he solved, in a
new and simple manner, the attractions of these ellipsoids upon points situated
on their exterior. Three of these were on the Attractions of Spheroids, in which
he substituted a process of analysis so much superior to that of the celebrated
Laplace, that the latter frankly acknowledged the superiority. Another
communication, published in the Transactions for 1814, is entitled "A New Method
of deducing a First Approximation to the Orbit of a Comet from three Geocentric
Observations." Two of the articles contain his investigations on the subject of
Astronomical Refractions; and four on the Equilibrium of Fluid Bodies. These
titles will suffice to show the subjects that chiefly occupied his attention.
Only one of these papers was purely mathematical, and was entitled "On the
Theory of Elliptic Transcendents."
The honours that were conferred
upon a silent, recluse student, such as Mr. Ivory was, showed how greatly his
scientific acquirements and his writings were valued. In 1814, the Copley medal
was awarded to him for his mathematical communications to the Royal Society; in
1826, he received one of the royal medals for his paper on Astronomical
Refractions, published in 1823; and in 1839, another royal medal was bestowed on
him for his Theory of Astronomical Refractions, which was published in the
previous year. In 1815 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London;
he was also an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, of the Royal
Irish Academy, and of the Cambridge Philosophical Society; a corresponding
member of the Institute of France, of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Berlin,
and of the Royal Society of Gottingen. In consequence of a recommendation of
Lord Brougham to William IV., Mr Ivory, in 1831, was honoured with the
Hanoverian Guelphic order of knighthood, and a pension of 300 pounds per annum;
and in 1839, he received the diploma of Doctor of Laws from the university of
St. Andrews. |
