[7] It is rather strange that the ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica contains no biography of Green. Born in the year 1793 at Nottingham, the son of a baker, he assisted his father, who latterly acquired a miller's business at the neighbouring village of Sneinton. In 1829 his father died, and he disposed of the business in order that he might have leisure to give to mathematics, in which, though entirely self-taught, he had begun to make original researches. His famous 'Essay' was published by subscription in 1828, and attracted but little attention. In 1833, at forty years of age, Green entered at Gonville and Caius College, and obtained the fourth place in the mathematical tripos of 1837, the year of Griffin, Sylvester, and Gregory. His university career, whatever else it may have done, apparently did not tend to make his earlier work much better known to the general scientific public, and he died in 1841 without the scientific recognition which was his due. That came later when, as stated below, Thomson discovered him to the French mathematicians and republished his 'Essay.'
[8] January 1869, Reprint, etc., Article XV.
[9] Reprint, Article V.
[10] The geometrical idea was, however, given and applied at least as early as 1836 by Bellavitis, for a paper entitled "Teoria delle figure inversa" appears in the Annali delle Scienze del Regno Lombardo-Veneto for that year. It was also described as an independent discovery by Mr. John Wm. Stubbs, in a paper in the Philosophical Magazine for November 1843. In a note on the history of the transformation in Taylor's Geometry of Conics the date (without reference) of Bellavitis is given, and it is stated that the method of inversion was given afresh by Messrs. Ingram and Stubbs (Dublin, Phil. Soc. Trans. I). The note also mentions that inversion was "applied by Dr. Hirst to attractions," but contains no reference to Thomson's papers!
[11] "De Caloris distributione per Terræ Corpus" in the Faculty minute, as stated above.
[12] Sic. Without doubt a mistake of the scribe for "Liouville."
[13] North Wales Chronicle, Report, Feb. 7, 1885.
[14] Published: Treatise on Natural Philosophy, vol. i in 1867; Elements of Natural Philosophy in 1873.
[15] The exact date at which this was done cannot be determined from the Minutes of the Faculty, as they contain no reference to the appropriation of space for the purpose. In his Oration on James Watt, delivered at the Ninth Jubilee of the University of Glasgow, in 1901, Lord Kelvin referred to the Glasgow Physical Laboratory as having grown up between 1846 and 1856; and elsewhere he has referred to it as having been "incipient" in 1851.
[16] There are now in Glasgow in the winter session alone about 360 elementary students and 80 advanced students, and about 250 taking practical laboratory work.