Education
He was born in Dublin, Ireland, the fourth child of John Smith, a barrister, who died when Henry was two. His mother very soon afterward moved the family to England. He lived in several places in England as a boy, and had private tutors for his education. His mother did not send him to school but educated him herself until age 6, at which point she hired private tutors. At age 15 Smith was admitted in 1841 to Rugby School in Warwickshire, where Thomas Arnold was the school's headmaster. This came about because his tutor Henry Highton took up a housemaster position there.
At 19 he won an entrance scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford. He graduated in 1849 with high honours in both mathematics and classics. Smith was fluent in French having spent holidays in France, and he took classes in mathematics at the Sorbonne in Paris during the 1846-1847 academic year.
Read more about this topic: Henry John Stephen Smith
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