Biography
Born at Exeter, William Clifford showed great promise at school. He went on to King's College London (at age 15) and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was elected fellow in 1868, after being second wrangler in 1867 and second Smith's prizeman. (Being second was a fate he shared with others who became famous mathematicians: for example, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), or James Clerk Maxwell.) In 1870, he was part of an expedition to Italy to observe an eclipse, and survived a shipwreck along the Sicilian coast.
In 1871, he was appointed professor of mathematics and mechanics at University College London, and in 1874 became a fellow of the Royal Society. He was also a member of the London Mathematical Society and the Metaphysical Society.
On April 7, 1875, Clifford married Lucy Lane. In 1876, Clifford suffered a breakdown, probably brought on by overwork; he taught and administered by day, and wrote by night. A half-year holiday in Algeria and Spain allowed him to resume his duties for 18 months, after which he collapsed again. He went to the island of Madeira to recover, but died there of tuberculosis after a few months, leaving a widow with two children. Eleven days later, Albert Einstein was born, who would go on to develop the geometric theory of gravity that Clifford had suggested nine years earlier.
Similar to Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, he enjoyed entertaining children, writing a collection of fairy stories, The Little People.
Clifford and his wife are buried in London's Highgate Cemetery just north of the grave of Karl Marx, and near the graves of George Eliot and Herbert Spencer.
Read more about this topic: William Kingdon Clifford
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