Abstract
GEORGE DARWIN, whose decease occurred at Cambridge on Saturday, December 7, came, as is well known, of illustrious scientific lineage, having been born in 1845 at Down, the second son of Charles Darwin, author of ”The Origin of Species,” and thereby the renovator of the biological sciences. Like many contemporaries who attained to distinction in scientific pursuits, his school education was gained under the Rev. Charles Pritchard, F.R.S., afterwards Savilian professor of astronomy at Oxford. He went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1864, graduated as second wrangler and second Smith's prizeman in 1868, the present Lord Moulton being senior; he was elected a fellow of Trinity the same year, and enjoyed the statutory tenure of ten years. In addition to mathematical subjects, he was interested in economic and political science, and with a view to practical life was called to the Bar in 1874. About this time he wrote a well-known statistical memoir on the marriage of first cousins, an early example of the present exact investigations in cognate biological domains. Considerations of health, however, prompted his return to Cambridge, where he devoted himself to mathematical science, especially in its astronomical aspects. He had already initiated his most striking contributions to the subject of the evolution of the solar system, especially the moon-earth system, and to cosmogony in general, when he was elected to the Plumian chair of astronomy and experimental philosophy in 1883. He was re-elected fellow of Trinity, as professor, in 1884, and his marriage dates from the same year.
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L., J. Sir George Howard Darwin, K.C.B., F.R.S. . Nature 90, 413–415 (1912). https://doi.org/10.1038/090413a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/090413a0