Chair Of Mathematics Research Articles

8. Biographical Notice of Jacques-Adolphe-Lambert Quetelet

JACQUES-ADOLPHE-LAMBERT QUETELET.—On 17th February 1874 Quetelet died at Brussels, in the seventy-eighth year of his age, having been born at Ghent on 22d February 1796. At the age of 18 he was appointed Professor of Mathematics in the College at Ghent; and in July 1819, the degree of Doctor of Science was conferred on him by the University of the same town, which had just been founded by King William. His dissertation on the occasion was so well received that he was shortly thereafter appointed to the Chair of Mathematics in the Royal Athenæum of Brussels. In February following he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences and Belles-Lettres.

Quetelet

ON February 17 last Jacques-Adolphe-Lambert Quetelet died at Brussels, in the seventy-eighth year of his age, having been born on February 22, 1796, at Ghent. At the early age of 18 he was appointed Professor of Mathematics in the College of his native town. In July, 1819, the degree of Doctor of Science was conferred on him by the University of Ghent, then recently founded by King William. His dissertation on this occasion was so well received that he was shortly thereafter appointed to the Chair of Mathematics at the Royal Athenæum of Brussels; and in February following was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences and Belles-Lettres.

Some Account of James Dodson, F.R.S.

No life has been written of the original projector of the Equitable Society, except in a column of the Biographie Universelle by M. Nicollet. Dodson's name was, and even still is, so familiar to the actuary, chiefly through the Mathematical Repository, and the impulse he gave to life-contingency problems, that this Journal is the proper place of deposit for what can be collected concerning him. The article above mentioned tells very little. He succeeded Hodgson [which should have been Robertson] in the chair of mathematics at Christchurch Hospital in 1756 [1755] and died November 23, 1757. He published the Antilogarithmic Canon, which others had contemplated [and executed too, but the manuscript was lost] and which he had the courage to execute up to a certain point [his table is the counterpart of Vlacq's largest direct table: five figures of argument and eleven of tabular result]. He could not balance the success of the ordinary tables: the writer doubts whether the table was ever used on the continent [he might have added, England: who uses either Vlacq or Dodson? Their tables are for help to other table-makers, and always were, though both of them intended more]. He published, the Calculator in 1747, a collection of tables at the end of which [say in the proper place in the middle] is an abridgment of the antilogarithmic table. But he is best known in England by his Mathematical Repository, and by his zeal for benevolent institutions [say his determination to found an assurance office to which himself should be admissible].