Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/466

 444 PEACOCK 1791. He was educated at Richmond, Yorkshire, and entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1809. He was second wrangler in the mathematical tripos of 1812 (Sir J. F. W. Herschel being senior), was elected fellow of his college in 1814, and became assistant tutor and lecturer in 1815, fall tutor in 1823, and sole tutor of &quot;his side&quot; in 1835. Peacock distinguished himself by his business capacity, and by his broad views of the duties and func tions of the educational institution in whose management he had so large a share. Peacock was all his life an ardent educational reformer. While still an undergraduate he formed a league with Herschel, Babbage, and Maule to conduct the famous struggle of &quot;d-ism versus dot-age,&quot; which ended in the introduction into Cambridge of the Continental notation -T- ) in the infinitesimal calculus to the exclusion of the ax/ fluxional notation (y] of Newton. This was an import ant reform, not so much on account of the mere change of notation (for nowadays mathematicians follow Lagrange in using both these notations), but because it signified the opening to the mathematicians of Cambridge of the vast storehouse of Continental discoveries. Up to that time Cambridge mathematicians had been resting supinely under the shadow of Newton, despising the Continental methods, but doing nothing to demonstrate the power of their own. The analytical society thus formed in 1813 published vari ous memoirs, and translated Lacroix s Differential Calculus in 1816. Peacock powerfully aided the movement by pub lishing in 1820 A Collection of Examples of the Application of the Differential and Integral Calculus, which remains a valuable text-book to this day. He also took a great in terest in the general question of university education. In 1841 he published a pamphlet on the university statutes, in which he indicated the necessity for reform ; and in 1850 and 1855 he was a member of the commission of inquiry relative to the university of Cambridge. In 1837 he was appointed Lowndean professor of astronomy. In 1839 he took the degree of D.D., and the same year was appointed by Lord Melbourne to the deanery of Ely. Without in any way neglecting his university duties, Peacock threw himself with character istic ardour into the duties of this new position. He improved the sanitation of Ely, published in 1840 Ob servations on Plans for Cathedral Reform, and carried out extensive works of restoration in his own cathedral. He was twice prolocutor of the lower house of convocation for the province of Canterbury. This list by no means exhausts the sphere of Peacock s activity. He was a prime mover in the establishment of the Cambridge Astronomical Observatory, and in the founding of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. He was a fellow of the Royal, Royal Astronomical, Geological, and other scientific societies. In 1838, and again in 1843, he was one of the commissioners for standards of weights and measures ; and he also furnished valuable information to the commissioners on decimal coinage, a matter in which he took great interest. He died on the 8th November 1858, before the university commission, in whose work he took so great an interest, had finished its labours. It will excite little surprise that a man of so many occupations should have left more mark upon the men of his own day than upon the science of the succeeding generation. Although Peacock was most distinguished and will be longest remembered as a mathe matician, it would be difficult to point to much work of his which is of importance at the present day. His original contributions to mathematical science were concerned chiefly with the philosophy of its first principles. He did good service in systematizing the operational laws of algebra, and in throwing light upon the nature and use of imaginaries. His work in this field was, however, thrown into the shade by the later and farther -reaching discoveries of Hamilton and Grassmann. Two great services he did for mathema tical education which deserve especial mention. He published, first in 1830, and then in an enlarged form in 1842, a Treatise mi Alytbra, in which he applied his philosophical ideas concerning algebraical analysis to the elucidation of its elements. This text book was probably too far ahead of his age, for it does not seem to have come into very general use ; at all events, it might with great advantage be studied by the teachers of elementary mathematics at the present day, and is very much superior in method and arrange ment to any of the English text-books at present in vogue. The second great service was the publication in the British Association Reports for 1833 of his &quot;Report on the Recent Progress and Present State of certain branches of Analysis. &quot; English mathematicians of this generation will doubtless find on reading this brilliant summary a good many dicta which they will call in question, and they will see a good deal of evidence that Peacock did not always fully appre ciate, or perhaps always quite understand, the work of the foremost Continental mathematicians of his time ; but they will be ready to condone these shortcomings when they remember that they were carried on the shoulders of Peacock and his &quot;d-istic league&quot; out of the mire into which English mathematics had fallen, and that it- is but natural that they should catch a better view of the sur rounding scenery than did their bearer. Whatever its defects may be, Peacock s report remains a work of permanent value, one of the first and one of the best of those valuable summaries of scientific progress which have enriched the annual volumes of the British Association, and which would have justified its existence had it done nothing else for the advancement of science. PEACOCK, THOMAS LOVE (1785-1866), novelist and poet, was born at Weymouth, 18th October 1785. His father, a glass merchant in London, died soon after his son s birth, and young Peacock received his education at a private school at Englefield Green, where he distinguished himself by unusual precocity. After a brief experience of business he elected to devote himself to study and the pursuit of literature, living with his mother on their private means. His first books were poetical, The Monks of St Mark (1804), Palmyra (1806), The Genius of the Thames (1810), The Philosophy of Melancholy (1812), works of no great merit. He also made several dramatic attempts, which did not find their way to the stage. He served for a short time as secretary to Sir Home Popham at Flushing, and paid several visits to Wales. In 1812 he became acquainted with Shelley, who made him his executor together with Lord Byron. In 1815 he evinced his peculiar power by writing Headlong Hall, the proto type of all his subsequent novels. It was published in 1816, and Melincourt followed in the ensuing year. During 1817 he lived at Great Marlow, enjoying the almost daily society of Shelley, and writing Nightmare Abbey and Rhododaphne, by far the best of his long poems. In 1819 he received the appointment of assistant examiner at the India House, at the same time as Mill and Strachey. Peacock s nomination appears to have been due to the influence of his old schoolfellow Peter Auber, secretary to the East India Company, and the papers he prepared as tests of his ability were returned to him with the high encomium, &quot;Nothing superfluous and nothing Avanting.&quot; This was characteristic of the whole of his intellectual work ; and equally characteristic of the man was his marriage about this time to a Welsh lady, to whom he pro posed by letter, not having seen her for eight years. His official duties greatly interfered with independent com position. Maid Marian nevertheless appeared in 1822, The Misfortunes of Elphin in 1829, and Crotchet Castle in 1831 ; and he would probably have written more but for the death in 1833 of his mother, to whom he was deeply attached. He also contributed to the Westminster Review and the Examiner. His services to the East India Com pany, outside the usual official routine, were considerable. He defended it successfully against the attacks of Mr J. S. Buckingham and the Liverpool salt interest, and made the subject of steam navigation to India peculiarly his own. He represented the company before the various parliamentary committees on this question ; and in 1839 and 1840 superintended the construction of iron steamers,