In that year he began the practice of giving public lectures, a source from which most of his published work stems. He participated in a scientific expedition, which was wrecked off the coast of Catania, Sicily. In 1870 he was appointed professor of applied mathematics at University College, London. Soon after, he became a member of the most distinguished intellectual society of the day, the Metaphysical Society, as well as of the London Mathematical Society. Tragically, his life was drawing to a close, for he had contracted tuberculosis. His condition worsened, until by 1878 it was evident that the disease was far advanced. In 1879 he traveled south to try to counteract the disease, but he died on March 3 of that year.
During Clifford's lifetime he published only a textbook on dynamics and some scattered technical and nontechnical papers based on his lectures. It remained for a number of his friends to gather together his work. H. J. S. Smith edited the mathematical papers, F. Pollock the philosophical ones. The young Karl Pearson edited and completed his popular work on science, The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences.
Scientific Epistemology
Clifford's philosophical views must be placed within the context of several major influences upon his thought: the Kantian frame in epistemology, the Riemannian frame in geometry, and the Darwinian frame in biology.
This page contains 199 words.
Clifford, William Kingdon (1845–1879) article
Read the rest of this article.
This article contains 2,488 words
(approx. 8 pages at 300 words per page).
Order our William Kingdon Clifford Article
