These are anonymous; but the author (whom I believe to be Mr. Denison,[[726]] presently noted) is described as author of a new system of mathematics, and also of mechanics. He had need have both, for he shows that the line which has a square equal to a given circle, has a cube equal to the sphere on the same diameter: that is, in old mathematics, the diameter is to the circumference as 9 to 16! Again, admitting that the velocities of planets in circular orbits are inversely as the square roots of their distances, that is, admitting Kepler's law, he manages to prove that gravitation is inversely as the square root of the distance: and suspects magnetism of doing the difference between this and Newton's law.
Magnetism and electricity are, in physics, the member of parliament and the cabman—at every man's bidding, as Henry Warburton[[727]] said.
The above is an outrageous quadrature. In the preceding year, 1841, was published what I suppose at first to be a Maori quadrature, by Maccook. But I get it from a cutting out of some French periodical, and I incline to think that it must be by a Mr. McCook. He makes π to be 2 + 2√(8√2 - 11).
THE DUPLICATION PROBLEM.
Refutation of a Pamphlet written by the Rev. John Mackey, R.C.P.,[[728]] entitled "A method of making a cube double of a cube, founded on the principles of elementary geometry," wherein his principles are proved erroneous, and the required solution not yet obtained. By Robert Murphy.[[729]] Mallow, 1824, 12mo.
This refutation was the production of an Irish boy of eighteen years old, self-educated in mathematics, the son of a shoemaker at Mallow. He died in 1843, leaving a name which is well known among mathematicians. His works on the theory of equations and on electricity, and his papers in the Cambridge Transactions, are all of high genius. The only account of him which I know of is that which I wrote for the Supplement of the Penny Cyclopædia. He was thrown by his talents into a good income at Cambridge, with no social training except penury, and very little intellectual training except mathematics. He fell into dissipation, and his scientific career was almost arrested: but he had great good in him, to my knowledge. A sentence in
a letter from the late Dean Peacock[[730]] to me—giving some advice about the means of serving Murphy—sets out the old case: "Murphy is a man whose special education is in advance of his general; and such men are almost always difficult subjects to manage." This article having been omitted in its proper place, I put it at 1843, the date of Murphy's death.
A NEW VALUE OF π.
The Invisible Universe disclosed; or, the real Plan and Government of the Universe. By Henry Coleman Johnson, Esq. London, 1843, 8vo.
The book opens abruptly with: