Hamnet Holditch

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Reverend Hamnet Holditch
Born1800
Lynn, Norfolk, England
Died12 December 1867
Cambridge, England
NationalityEnglish
Known forHolditch's theorem
AwardsSmith's Prize (1822)
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics

Rev. Hamnet Holditch, also spelled Hamnett Holditch (1800 – 12 December 1867), was an English mathematician who was President of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

In 1858, he introduced the result in geometry now known as Holditch's theorem.

Hamnet Holditch was born in 1800 in King's Lynn. He matriculated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in 1818, and graduated B.A. in 1822 (Senior Wrangler and 1st Smith's Prize), M.A. in 1825.[1] He was a Fellow of Caius College, and its President from 1835 until 1867, when he died.[2]

Although Holditch produced ten mathematical papers, he was extremely idle as a tutor. John Venn, an undergraduate at Caius in the 1850s then a Caius Fellow from 1857, observed that Holditch "would probably have distinguished himself had he been compelled to work," but "beyond a few private pupils, never took part in educational work". He was "virtually invisible" in college (A. D. D. Craik): he spent most summers fishing in Scotland or Wales,[3] and his face was so unfamiliar that a Fellow once mistook him for a stranger and showed him round the college.[1]

He was the only son of George Holditch, and had two sisters.

Bibliography[]

  • Rev. Hamnett Holditch, "Concise Demonstration of the Property of the Parabola", The London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, vol. 10, 1837, pp. 35–36. (Google Books)
  • Hamnett Holditch, "On Rolling Curves", Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, vol. 7, (1842), pp. 61–86. (Google Books)
  • Rev. H. Holditch, "On Small Finite Oscillations", Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, Volume the Eighth, Cambridge, 1849, pp. 89–104. (Google Books)
  • Rev. Hamnet Holditch, "On the Caustic by Reflection from a Spherical Surface", The Quarterly Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 1, London, 1857, pp. 93–111. (Google Books)
  • Rev. Hamnet Holditch, "Geometrical Theorem", The Quarterly Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 2, London, 1858, p. 38. (Google Books; Internet Archive)
  • Rev. Hamnet Holditch, "On the nth Caustic, by Reflexion from a Circle", The Quarterly Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 2, London, 1858, pp. 301–322. (Google Books)
  • Rev. Hamnet Holditch, "On the nth Evolutes and Involutes of Curves", The Quarterly Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 3, London, 1860, pp. 236–246. (Google Books)
  • Rev. Hamnet Holditch, "Theorems on Related Curves", The Quarterly Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 3, London, 1860, pp. 271–274. (Google Books)
  • Rev. Hamnet Holditch, "On Double Tangents", The Quarterly Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 4, London, 1861, pp. 28–44. (Google Books)
  • Rev. Hamnet Holditch, "On a Magic Square", The Quarterly Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 6, London, 1864, pp. 181–189. (Google Books)

Notes[]

  1. ^ a b "Holditch, Hamnett (HLDC818H)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  2. ^ David Taylor, "Reverend Hamnett Holditch (1800–1867)" Archived 2014-10-16 at the Wayback Machine, HFHS Journal, Issue 24 (May 2003).
  3. ^ Craik, A. D. D. (2007). Mr Hopkins' Men: Cambridge reform and British mathematics in the 19th century. p. 44. Retrieved 24 December 2021.

References[]

Retrieved from ""