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Laura Romano
Professor Glass
Mat 101 EA
2 May 2007
Dead Mathematicians Hall of Fame:
Augustus De Morgan Hall of Fame Inductee
Welcome, distinguished guests, family, and Hall of Fame associates. I am delighted to be here this evening with two goals. One is to thank all of you – individually, continually and sincerely – for your support on behalf of my great uncle, and British Mathematician, Augustus De Morgan. My other goal is to boast about him.
Great Uncle De Morgan’s career brought to many, an inspiration and a sense of purpose. I am sure he would have wished to share this honor and tribute with all scientists, students, mathematicians and anyone else who had helped along the way.
Let me start off by giving you a brief glimpse into his life. Uncle Augustus was born in India in1806. Early a family friend discovered he was mathematically inclined but he wasn’t the kind of student you would have thought he would have been. He was not well liked by his fellow classmates, and he was often poked fun at for having a birth defect (he lost sight in one of his eyes), leaving the door
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open for children to pick on him. Rest assured, this handicap did not slow him down in any way!
In 1823, at the age of sixteen, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he immediately came under the tutorial influence of George Peacock and William Whewell. From Peacock he derived an interest in algebra, and from Whewell, an interest in logic. His future life’s work would include both of these subjects, and both gentlemen would become his life long friends.
After receiving his Bachelor of Arts, and since there weren’t any career steps to be made at his own university, he decided to study for the Bar at the Lincoln Inn. This brought him back to London. He definitely preferred mathematics to reading law. Around the same time in 1827, there was a new college being established in town. It was the University College in London. This new center for higher education was the complete opposite of each prehistoric university in Oxford and Cambridge. While both campuses were restrained by theology, University College was religious-free. Uncle Augustus was deemed ineligible for a graduate education and fellowship at Trinity due to his objections to theological testing. This did not hold him back. Who would have thought my great uncle Augustus was such a liberal? He applied for a chair position at the new University College, and was appointed as a chair and professor of Mathematics. Please keep in mind; he resigned this chair position many times on an account of “principle”. He had very strong convictions to say the least and would resign on a dime if he deemed it necessary.
He also wrote many books. His book Elements of Arithmetic, published in 1830, was his second publication and was to see many editions. In 1838 he defined and introduced the term ‘mathematical induction’, putting a process that had been used without clarity on a rigorous basis. The term first appears in De Morgan’s article Induction (Mathematics) in the Penny Cyclopedia. (Over the years he was to write seven hundred and twelve articles for the PennyCyclopedia.) The Penny Cyclopedia was published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, set up by the same reformers who founded London University, and that Society also published a famous work by De Morgan, The Differential and Integral Calculus. (Calkins).
In 1849 he published Trigonometry and Double Algebra in which he gave a geometric interpretation of complex numbers. He recognized the purely symbolic nature of algebra and he was aware of the existence of algebras other than ordinary algebra. (Calkins).
Today, he is mainly known for De Morgan’s Law, which states that the negation of a conjunction/disjunction is equal to the disjunction/conjunction of the negated conjuncts/disjuncts, and which was already known by William of Ockham in the 14th century. But his main contributions are found in the theory of syllogisms, where he was the first since medieval times extensively to discuss
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quantified relations. He recognized that relational inferences were the core of mathematical inference and scientific reasoning.
In 1828, he became a member of the “Royal Astronomy” and 3 years later he helped to found the “British Association for the Advancement of Science”. He ran the “Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge”, and when he retired from his academic post in 1866 he was involved in the foundation of the “London Mathematical Society” and became its first president. His diversity also covered educational subjects: He wrote essays on mathematical education, the concept of an École Polytechnique and the education of the deaf and dumb.(NJPL).
As a teacher, Uncle De Morgan was highly praised at making mathematics alive and interesting to his students. He was unconventional in personality and in his academic life. He also loved odd numerical facts, paradoxes, riddles, lore, and anecdotes.
It is often said that no one forgets a good teacher. Whether this is true or false, almost everyone in this room can remember at least one who influenced some part of his or her future study or career. But there are occasional examples of great mathematics teachers who instill a remarkable number of their students with a love and enthusiasm for the subject, which has a lasting and profound effect on them, even if they never become practicing mathematicians. (Rice 534).
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I appreciate everyone for coming to this reception, to honor my Great Uncle, Augustus De Morgan. I am sure he would have definitely been enamored to have such an honor bestowed upon him by this society, and by all who are present here tonight. Thank you.
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Works Cited
Augustus De Morgan- Love to Know 1911,
Biography of Boole and De Morgan. Ed. Calkins. 1998, October 26, 1998.
De Morgans Life and Work. Nordic Journal of Philosophical Logic, Vol. 2, No.1,
pp 41-62.http://www.hf.uio.no/ifikk/filosofi/njpl/vol2no1/history/node5.html>
Rice, Adrian. “What Makes a Great Mathematician” The Case of Augustus De
Morgan. The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 106, No. 6 (Jun.-Jul., 1999), pp. 534-552.
