Thomas Archer Hirst

Thomas Archer Hirst FRS (22 April 1830 – 16 February 1892) was a 19th-century mathematician, specialising in geometry. He was awarded the Royal Society's Royal Medal in 1883.

Thomas Hirst was born in Heckmondwike, Yorkshire, England, where both his parents came from families in the wool trade. He was the youngest of four sons. The family moved to Wakefield so that the boys could attend a better school. Thomas attended Wakefield Proprietary School for four years from 1841. Of these days, he said "... I could obtain the most rudimentary and necessary instruction. I remember, however, that here mathematics was my favourite study ..." He left the school at fifteen to work as an apprentice engineer in Halifax, surveying for proposed railway lines. It was there that he met John Tyndall, ten years older than Hirst and working as an engineer in the same firm.

In his late teens, at the instigation of Tyndall, Hirst decided to go to Germany for education, initially in chemistry. He eventually received a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Marburg in 1852 (tutor: Friedrich Ludwig Stegmann). In 1853, he attended geometry lectures by Jakob Steiner at University of Berlin. Hirst married Anna Martin in 1854, and spent much of the decade of the 1850s on the European continent, where he socialized with many mathematicians, and used his inherited wealth to support himself.

From 1860 to 1864, Hirst taught at University College School, but resigned because he wanted more time for his mathematical research. He was appointed Professor of Physics at University College London in 1865, and he succeeded Augustus de Morgan to the Chair of Mathematics at UCL in 1867. In 1873 he was appointed as the first Director of Studies at the new Royal Naval College, Greenwich. He retired from that post in 1882, to be succeeded by William Davidson Niven.

...
Wikipedia