Life
1819-1904; b. 25 Sept.; son of a Michael Salmon, linen merchant and his
wife (née Weekes, a clergyman’s dg.); ed. Hamblin and Porter school,
Cork; mat. 1833; grad. 1st Snr. Mod, Maths. and Physics, 1838; Fellow,
1841; lecturer in divinity and mathematics; MRIA, 1843; deacon, 1844;
ord. 1845; m. Francis Anne Salvador (d.1878), dg. Churhc of England minister,
1844; lived on Wellington Rd., Dublin; Chancellor St. Patrick’s Cathedral;
D.D., 1859; succeeded Charles Gravers as Erasmus Smith Prof. on Mathematics,
TCD; much influenced by Jean-Victor Poncelet’s Traité des proprieeétés
projective des figures (1822), which outlined basis of projective geometric;
A Treatise on Conic Sections (1848), first issued for students
in ltd. edn. of 500 copies and followed by five elnarged editions; Treatise
on the Higher Plane Curves (1852), issued in 750 copies; with a 2nd
edn. in 1873, incl. additions by Arthur Cayley; Lessons introductory
to the Modern Higher Algebra (1859), first published in a printing
of 500 copies and reissued in edns. by Cayley and Sylvester to 1866, after
Salmon had retired from active mathematical research; A Treatise on
the Analytic Geometry of Three Dimensions (1862); elected Regius Professor
of Divinity, in succession to Samuel Butcher, 22 Dec. 1866; intensely
active in the so-called ‘revision’ controversy’ between evangelical and
high-church elements in the Church of Ireland after disestablishment,
1867; Non-Miraculous Christianity (1881); Introduction to the
New Testament (1885); Lectures The Infallibility of the Church
(1889); The Human Element in the Gospels (post. 1907); Lives
of the Saints, a lecture (1863); provost of TCD, 1888-1902 [var. 1904]
d. 22 Jan.; bur. Mount Jerome, with family members; survived by two children
of six born; donated monies to the College for foundation of Salmon fund;
there is a seated statue by John Hughes in marble at Front Square, TCD,
and a portrait by Benjamin Constant, also at TCD; he was related to Edward
Dowden through his mother’s family. DIW DNB DIB [FDA] OCIL
[ top ]
Criticism
Donald Akenson, The Church of Ireland: Ecclesiastical Reform and Revolution
1800-1885 (Yale UP 1971).
Rod Gow, ‘George Salmon 1819-1904’, in Ken Houston, ed., Creators of Mathematics: The Irish Connection (Dublin: UCD Press 2000), pp.39-45.
Notes
Gordon H. Davies, ‘Irish Thought in Science’, Richard
Kearney, ed. The Irish Mind: Exploring Intellectual Traditions (Dublin:
Wolfhound 1984), p.310.
“Women at Trinity”, feature (Irish Times Magazine, 17 April 2004) shows Frances Ruane, Professor of Economics and the first woman to contest the election for Provostship in 2001; notes that Salmon - before whose statue she is photographed - said that women would enter Trinity ‘over my dead body’.
Belfast
Public Library holds A Treatise on Conic Sections (1848).
Protestant
Gothic: A Treatise on Conic Sections (1848), is among the books
that Malcolm Malcolmson throws at the rat in Sheridan Le Fanu’s story
"The Judge’s House" - ‘though not as effacacious as the
Bible’.
Hyde on Salmon: At the Historical Society in College, Douglas Hyde spoke on ‘Celts and Teutons,’ and ‘Irish Rule in Ireland’, during 1885. In a paper entitled ‘The Attitude of the Reformed Church in Ireland’ at the Theo[logical Society], he argued that the Anglicans should sympathise with the nationalists, and was disparaged by Dr Salmon; Hyde reported in his diary, ‘Salmon in particular said he would not have come had be known what I was going to read.’ (See Dominic Daly, The Young Douglas Hyde, 1974, p.54-55). Note further that Salmon backed Hyde’s application for chair of History and English at Queens, Sept 1891. (ibid., p.150.)
Salmon in Ulysses: ‘[T]he reverend T. Salmon [sic] D.D., provost of Trinity college [sic]’ is cited as a career model (‘exemplar’) for Leopold Bloom in youth, during the cathetical section of James Joyce's Ulysses (Bodley Head Edn. p.808).
Benjamin Constant [sic] is the author of a portrait of Salmon at TCD; see Anne Crookshank, Irish Portraits Exhibition (Ulster Museum. 1965). There is a marble statue by John Hughes in Front Square (TCD), which was restored after severe mistreatment by undergaduates.
[ top ]
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)