Obituary notices of fellows deceased

Abstract

Among the losses which the Royal Society has recently sustained none has evoked deeper regret than the death of Sir Alfred Bray Kempe, who for twenty-one years, as its Treasurer and one of its Vice-Presidents, took a leading share in the management of its affairs and in the promotion of its prosperity. Some grateful record of his career could not find a more appropriate place than in the pages of the ‘Proceedings’ of the Society with which he was so long and so closely associated. The third son of Prebendary John Edward Kempe, Rector of St. James’s, Piccadilly, he was born on July 6, 1849. From St. Paul’s School, as Camden Exhibitioner, he passed to Trinity College, Cambridge, where, in 1872, he took his degree with special distinction in Mathematics. In the same year he published his first mathematical paper, the title of which—“A general method of solving equations of the n th. degree by mechanical means”—showed the bent of his mind in scientific enquiry. For some years he continued to publish mathematical essays, but having chosen the Law as his profession, and become a Barrister of the Inner Temple and Western Circuit, he was soon immersed in legal business. To the last, however, he never wholly relinquished his mathematical studies. He used to say of himself that his favourite recreations were Mathematics and Music. He was hardly ever without some problem at which, in such leisure as he could find, he steadily worked. But he refused, as he said, to “empty his note-books into the ‘Proceedings’ of the Royal Society.” He would not be induced to publish his studies until he had really got to the bottom of his enquiry.