Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/116

 mastery of detail, and his financial ability enabled him to render conspicuous service. Lord Northbrook died after a short illness at Stratton on 16 Nov. 1904, and was buried at Micheldever church.

Lord Northbrook belonged to the best type of whig statesmanship. Trained from boyhood to political life he had, like other men of position and fortune in his generation, a high ideal of citizenship and public spirit, and both as a statesman and country gentleman left an example of energy and capacity expended in the service of his fellow-men. He had a remarkable aptitude for official business and especially for finance. His judgment was sound, and though naturally quick and vivacious in temperament he was eminently fairminded and impartial, and took the utmost pains to inform himself by exhaustive study and inquiry on the merits of any political or administrative question with which he had to deal. He had little power of speaking and was shy and reserved in manner, but he had great self-reliance, wide sympathies, and much natural dignity, travelling, sketching, fishing, and in earlier life hunting, were his favourite recreations; he was a lover of books and reading and of art and pictures, of which he was a highly competent judge.

Lord Northbrook married in September 1848 Elizabeth Harriet, daughter of Henry Charles Sturt of Oichel, who died on 3 June 1867. There were three children of the marriage, two sons, of whom the elder succeeded as second Earl of Northbrook in 1904, and the second, Arthur, was drowned when serving as a midshipman on board H.M.S. Captain in 1870, and one daughter, Lady Jane Emma, who from her thirteenth year was her father's constant companion. She accompanied him to India, where at a very early age she acted as hostess for the viceroy with tact and success, and her marriage in 1890 to Col. the Hon. Henry George Lewis, third son of John Crichton, third earl of Erne, caused little interruption to their lifelong intercourse.

The principal portraits are a water-colour drawing of Lord Northbrook as a young man, by George Richmond, R. A., at Netley Castle, Hampshire, a drawing by H. T. Wells, R.A., for Grillion's Club, a portrait in peer's robes by W. W. Oulesa, R.A., at Government House, Calcutta (a copy at Stratton), and a portrait painted in 1903 by A. S. Cope, R.A., in the County Hall at Winchester (copy at Stratton). There is also at Calcutta a bronze statue of Lord Northbrook in the robes of a G.C.S.I., by Sir Edgar Boehm. Cartoon portraits are in 'Vanity Fair' 1876 and 1882.

 BARKER, THOMAS (1838–1907), professor of mathematics, born on 9 Sept. 1838, was son of Thomas Barker, farmer, of Murcar, Balgonie, near Aberdeen, and of his wife Margaret. Three other children died in infancy. He was educated at the grammar school, Aberdeen, and at King's College in the same town, where he graduated in 1857 with great distinction in mathematics. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, as minor scholar and subsizar in 1858, became foundation scholar in 1860, Sheepshanks astronomical exhibitioner in 1861, and came out in the mathematical tripos of 1862 as senior wrangler; he was also first Smith's prizeman. He was elected to a fellowship in the autumn of 1862, and was assistant tutor of Trinity till 1865, when he was appointed professor of pure mathematics in the Owens College, Manchester. He held this post for twenty years, during which the college advanced greatly both in resources and in public estimation. To this progress Barker's high repute as a teacher greatly contributed.

Barker's ideals as a mathematician differed much from those that were current in most colleges and universities of the country at the time. He was a follower of De Morgan and Boole; like them he was interested in the logical basis rather than in the applications of mathematics, and he endeavoured to set forth the processes of mathematical reasoning as a connected system from their foundation. His presentment of the subject was consequently not attractive to ordinary students, but on the more gifted minds which came under his influence it made a deep impression. His severely critical habit made him diffident of publication, but his success as a teacher is attested by the number of distinguished pupils on whom he exercised a great and possibly a determining influence. These include John Hopkinson, [q. v. Suppl. I], J. H. Poynting, A. Schuster, and Sir Joseph John Thomson.

After resignation of his chair in 1885 he lived in tranquil retirement, first at Whaley Bridge and afterwards at Buxton. His mathematical interests were varied by an almost passionate study of cryptogamic botany. He died unmarried at Buxton 