Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/72

336 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 per annum; and in 1839, he received the diploma of Doctor in Laws from the university of St. Andrews.

JAMIESON, REV JOHN, D.D,, F.R.S., F.S.A The debt of gratitude which Scotland owes to this laborious and successful antiquary of her language, it would- not be easy to estimate. At a time when the words of her ancient literature were, indeed, επεα πτεροεντα—when they had made to themselves wings, and were about to fly away for ever—he arrested and fixed them in a copious dictionary, where they promise to remain as long as our modern English endures. Our Scottish tongue may become a disused, or even a dead, but never an unintelligible language; and the antiquaries of future ages, who explore the early literature of Scotland, will bless the labours of Jamieson, whose dictionary will form the chief guide of their inquiries.

This excellent national philologist was born in Glasgow, in March, 1759. His father, the Rev. Mr. Jamieson, was one of the early ministers of the Secession, and presided over the Antiburgher congregation of Duke Street, Glasgow. As John was also designed for the ministry, he was sent, in early life, to the university of his native city, where his philological capacities obtained for him respectable notice as an apt' and diligent scholar in Latin and Greek. But this was by no means the field in which he was ultimately destined to excel; and his bent was already indicated, in his love of ancient ruined towers, and black-letter books. His vocation evidently was not to master a dead, but to revive a dying language; by far the more glorious achievement of the two.