Robert Harley (mathematician)

Robert Harley (1828–1910) was an English Congregational minister and mathematician.

Born in Liverpool on 23 January 1828, he was third son of Robert Harley by his wife Mary, daughter of William Stevenson, and niece of General Stevenson of Ayr.. The father, after a career as a merchant, became a minister of the Wesleyan Methodist Association. Harley's mathematical aptitude developed at school in Blackburn under William Hoole, and age 16 he was appointed to a mathematical mastership at Seacombe, near Liverpool, returning later to teach at Blackburn.

In 1854 Harley entered the Congregational ministry, and was at Brighouse, Yorkshire, until 1868, after a time also filling the chair of mathematics and logic at Airedale College. In 1863 he was admitted Fellow of the Royal Society. He acted as secretary of the A section of the British Association at meetings at Norwich (1868) and Edinburgh (1871); and was a vice-president of the meetings at Bradford (1873), Bath (1888), and Cardiff (1891).

From 1868 to 1872 he was pastor of the oldest Congregational church in Leicester, and from 1872 to 1881 was vice-principal of Mill Hill School, where he officiated in the chapel. At Mill Hill he was instrumental in erecting a public lecture hall for total abstinence talks as well as popular entertainment and instruction. From 1882 to 1885 he was principal of Huddersfield College, and from 1886 to 1890 minister of the Congregational church in Oxford, where he was made hon. M.A. in 1886.

Having taken a ministerial appointment in Australia, Harley was pastor of Heath Church, Halifax, from 1892 until 1895, when he retired and settled at Forest Hill, near London. He continued to preach in London and the provinces, and as a temperance advocate.

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