Obituary notice

Abstract

Micaiah John Muller Hill was the eldest son of the Rev. Samuel John Hill and was born at Berhampore, Bengal, on February 22, 1856, during the stormy days of the Indian Mutiny, in which he narrrowly escaped death. He was educated at the School for the Sons of Missionaries, Blackheath, and entered University College, London, as a student in October, 1872. His academic career in London was one long sequence of brilliant successes and at the same time an arduous struggle against financial difficulties which he could overcome only by winning such scholarships as the College and the University of London had to offer in those days—rare and coveted distinctions which fell to the lot of very few. In 1874 he took his B. A. degree in London, obtaining the first place in the Mathematical Honours List, a feat he accomplished in only two years and which he followed up in 1876 by winning the Gold Medal in the M. A. Examination. By this time he had entered as an undergraduate at Peterhouse, Cambridge. In 1879 he was Fourth Wrangler and Smith's Prizeman. He then returned to University College for a few months as assistant in the Department of Mathematics, and in 1880, at the age of twenty-four, was elected to the Chair of Mathematics at Mason College, as it then was, now the University of Birmingham.