Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/59

 , besides an account of 's [q. v.] lectures on the ‘Attraction of the Ellipsoid’ which appears in the latter's collected works. He also wrote a number of articles in the 9th edition of the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica’ on Greek mathematicians. His chief contribution to science is his ‘History of Greek Geometry from Thales to Euclid’ (Dublin 1889), which first appeared as articles in ‘Hermathena.’ In this he traced the rise and progress of geometry and arithmetic, and threw new light on the history of the early development of mathematics. With his life-long friend, [q. v. Suppl. II], he was attracted to positivism, and entered into correspondence with Comte in 1852; in 1854 he went to Paris and made his personal aquaintance. His position at Galway prevented his taking any public part in the positivist movement, but his teaching was much influenced by Comte's mathematical work, the ‘Synthèse Subjective,’ and his general theory of historical development. Allman died of pneumonia on 9 May 1904 at Farnham House, Finglass, Dublin.

He married in 1853 Louisa (d. 1864), daughter of John Smith Taylor of Dublin and Corballis, co. Meath. A son and two daughters survived him.

 ALMOND, HELY HUTCHINSON (1832–1903), headmaster of Loretto school, born in Glasgow on 12 Aug. 1832, was second son of George Almond, incumbent of St. Mary's Episcopal Chapel, Glasgow, by his second wife, Christiana Georgina, eldest daughter of Thomas Smith, barrister, of London. His paternal great-grandfather was headmaster of Derby school, and his maternal great-grandfather was John Hely-Hutchinson [q. v.], provost of Trinity College, Dublin. Precociously clever, he began to learn his letters at sixteen months, and at three years was struggling with the multiplication table. After attending the collegiate school, Glasgow, he entered in 1845 the University of Glasgow. At the end of the session he gained the Cowan gold medal in the Blackstone Latin examination, and he also specially distinguished himself in the Greek, mathematics and logic classes. Having been elected in 1850 to a Snell exhibition, he proceeded to Balliol College, Oxford. Here, contrary to the expectations of his tutors, who had the poorest opinions of his chances, he, in 1853, obtained a first class both in classical and mathematical moderations (a record for Balliol College); but, owing to ill-health and other causes, only a second in the final schools. Although he delighted in boating and won a place in the Balliol eight, he found little that was congenial in undergraduate life. In his later years he wrote, 'there is hardly a period of my life (since Oxford, which I hated) I would not gladly live over again.' He graduated B.A. in 1855 and M.A. in 1862. In 1855 he left Oxford for Torquay, where his father was living in retirement; and having failed to pass into the Indian civil service, he was induced by a friend, who had fallen ill, to assist him in his tutorial establishment. This led him to conceive a liking for teaching, and in 1857 he accepted the office of tutor in Loretto school, Musselburgh, then merely a preparatory for the English public schools. In the following year he became second master at Merchiston school, Edinburgh, where he took an active part in Rugby football, and did his utmost to foster a love of cricket, introducing an English professional to instruct the boys in the game. Already he had begun the strenuous advocacy of systematic physical exercise in schools, and of the cultivation of hardiness as essential to a thoroughly healthy boyhood, and of prime importance in the formation of proper habits of mind. These and other educational ideas he found opportunity to put into fuller practice, when, in 1862, he became proprietor of Loretto school so called from its contiguity to the site of the old chapel and hermitage dedicated to Our Lady of Loretto.

Here he began with only fourteen boys, supplemented for the first two or three years with a few university pupils; and, as he himself put it, gradually built up a school out of nothing, though the numbers never reached 150. His early, almost insuperable, difficulties he met with perfect gaiety; and he was accustomed to refer to this period of his life as 'the happy early days when I was nearly bankrupt.' He closely pursued a special educational aim. The first duty of a headmaster he conceived to be the direction of a school so as to accomplish the purpose of training the individual character. It was his leading maxim to rule by persuasion, not by force, and to secure what he called 'behind-back obedience.' 'Relations between master and boys were thus unusually sincere, and the place had rather the aspect of a family than of a school' ( Almond of Loretto, p. 160). So far also as he could he sought to develop an independent