Marrying the radical, the conventional, and the mystical: Mathematics, gender and religion in the lives of William Kingdon and Lucy Lane Clifford

Abstract

The avowed atheist, evolutionary naturalist and mathematician William Kingdon Clifford is often remembered for his essay, “The Ethics of Belief,” in which he opposed organized religion in any form. As a mathematician, Clifford was an early advocate of non-Euclidean geometry in England. Combining William Rowan Hamilton’s work on quaternions with Hermann Grassmann’s theory of linear extension, he invented an original system of geometric algebra. Breaking with conservative traditionalism in his philosophical and mathematical work, Clifford’s marriage to the children’s writer, novelist, and dramatist Lucy Lane was a relatively conventional, if brief, Victorian marriage. After his untimely death from consumption in 1879, Lucy outlived her husband by fifty years. Raising their two daughters and supporting herself after his passing, Lucy refashioned Clifford’s posthumous reputation to temper his philosophical radicalism. Her collaboration with Clifford’s publisher and editor reveal Lucy’s concern that Clifford not be remembered as someone ruled by passion in his mathematical work. Her efforts to expunge writings suggestive of William’s weakness, excitability, or inconstancy from the public record demonstrates her desire to craft an image of her husband in alignment with gendered expectations of masculinity. This paper argues that Lucy fashioning of William’s memory conformed, rather than departed from, normative parameters of gender as defined by Victorian society.