William Hopkins
Encyclopedia
William Hopkins FRS (2 February 1793 – 13 October 1866) was an English
mathematician
and geologist
. He is famous as a private tutor of aspiring undergraduate Cambridge
mathematicians, earning him the sobriquet the senior-wrangler maker.
He also made important contributions in asserting a solid, rather than fluid, interior for the Earth and explaining many geological phenomena in terms of his model. However, though his conclusions proved to be correct, his mathematical and physical reasoning were subsequently seen as unsound.
, the only son of William Hopkins, a gentleman farmer
. In his youth he learned practical agriculture in Norfolk
before his father rented him a small farm at Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
. However, Hopkins was unsuccessful as a farmer and, when his first wife died sometime around 1821, he took the opportunity to mitigate his losses and enter St Peter's College
(now Peterhouse) at the University of Cambridge, taking his degree of B.A.
in 1827 as seventh wrangler and M.A. in 1830.
and G. G. Stokes. Among his more famous pupils were Lord Kelvin, James Clerk Maxwell
and Isaac Todhunter
. Francis Galton
praised his teaching style:
He also coached Edward Routh
who went on to be Senior Wrangler and himself a prodigious "wrangler maker". In 1833, Hopkins published Elements of Trigonometry and became distinguished for his mathematical knowledge.
There was a famous story that the theory of George Green
(1793–1841) was almost forgotten. In 1845, Lord Kelvin (William Thomson, a young man in 1845) got some copies of Green's 1828 short book from William Hopkins. Subsequently, Lord Kelvin helped to make Green's 1828 work famous according to the book "George Green" written by D.M. Cannell.
at Barmouth
and joining him in several excursions, he became intensely interested in geology
. From then on, in papers published by the Cambridge Philosophical Society
and the Geological Society of London
, he defined the discipline of physical geology, making mathematical investigations dealing with the effects that an elevatory force, acting from below, would produce on a portion of the Earth
's crust
, in fissures and fault
s. In this way he discussed the elevation and denudation of the Lake District
, the Weald
en area, and the Bas Boulonnais.
Hopkins conceived of a largely solid but dynamic Earth threaded with cavities whereby hot vapours or fluid
s could create locally elevatory pressures. Such a model was at odds with the ideas of Charles Lyell
whose theory was of a "steady state" with a largely liquid
terrestrial interior, inside a solid crust no more than 100 miles thick. Hopkins presented a series of papers at the Royal Society
between 1838 and 1842 analysing the Earth's rotation, including its precession
and nutation
, and using observations to support his theory, contending that they were inconsistent with a fluid interior. He also interpreted earthquake
s and volcano
es through the same model in an 1847 British Association report.
As part of his investigations, Hopkins sought to quantify the effects of enormous pressure
s on the melting point
and thermal conductivity
of various substances. With the support of a grant from the Royal Society, he invoked the assistance of Thomson, James Prescott Joule
and William Fairbairn
to make measurements which he interpreted as supporting his theory. He further asserted that the cooling of the Earth had had no real impact on climate
. He read a paper to the Geological Society On the Causes which may have produced changes in the Earth's superficial Temperature (1851). In his second address as president of the Geological Society of London (1853) he criticized Elie de Beaumont's theory of the elevation of mountain-chains and the imperfect evidence on which he saw it as resting.
Ultimately, it was Thomson who tactfully pointed out that, though Hopkins's conclusions about the Earth's structure were correct, his mathematical and physical reasoning was unsound.
s and the transport of glacial erratic
s but trespassed on the sensitivities of J. D. Forbes
who saw the subject as his personal fiefdom and was contemptuous of Hopkins's lack of observational experience in the subject.
, poetry
and landscape painting
. He spent the end of his life in a lunatic asylum
in Stoke Newington
. He died there of chronic mania
and exhaustion.
He had, with his second wife, one son and three daughters, among them morality campaigner Ellice Hopkins
.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
mathematician
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
and geologist
Geologist
A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth as well as the processes and history that has shaped it. Geologists usually engage in studying geology. Geologists, studying more of an applied science than a theoretical one, must approach Geology using...
. He is famous as a private tutor of aspiring undergraduate Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
mathematicians, earning him the sobriquet the senior-wrangler maker.
He also made important contributions in asserting a solid, rather than fluid, interior for the Earth and explaining many geological phenomena in terms of his model. However, though his conclusions proved to be correct, his mathematical and physical reasoning were subsequently seen as unsound.
Early life
Hopkins was born at Kingston-on-Soar, in NottinghamshireNottinghamshire
Nottinghamshire is a county in the East Midlands of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west...
, the only son of William Hopkins, a gentleman farmer
Farmer
A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, who raises living organisms for food or raw materials, generally including livestock husbandry and growing crops, such as produce and grain...
. In his youth he learned practical agriculture in Norfolk
Norfolk
Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...
before his father rented him a small farm at Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
Suffolk
Suffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...
. However, Hopkins was unsuccessful as a farmer and, when his first wife died sometime around 1821, he took the opportunity to mitigate his losses and enter St Peter's College
Peterhouse, Cambridge
Peterhouse is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. It is the oldest college of the University, having been founded in 1284 by Hugo de Balsham, Bishop of Ely...
(now Peterhouse) at the University of Cambridge, taking his degree of B.A.
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
in 1827 as seventh wrangler and M.A. in 1830.
Wrangler maker
Before graduation, Hopkins had married Caroline Frances Boys (1799–1881) and was, therefore, ineligible for a fellowship. He instead maintained himself as a private tutor, coaching the young mathematicians who sought the prestigious distinction of Senior Wrangler. He was enormously successful in the role, earning the sobriquet senior wrangler maker and grossing £700-800 annually. By 1849, he had coached almost 200 wranglers, of whom 17 were senior wranglers including Arthur CayleyArthur Cayley
Arthur Cayley F.R.S. was a British mathematician. He helped found the modern British school of pure mathematics....
and G. G. Stokes. Among his more famous pupils were Lord Kelvin, James Clerk Maxwell
James Clerk Maxwell
James Clerk Maxwell of Glenlair was a Scottish physicist and mathematician. His most prominent achievement was formulating classical electromagnetic theory. This united all previously unrelated observations, experiments and equations of electricity, magnetism and optics into a consistent theory...
and Isaac Todhunter
Isaac Todhunter
Isaac Todhunter FRS , was an English mathematician who is best known today for the books he wrote on mathematics and its history.- Life and work :...
. Francis Galton
Francis Galton
Sir Francis Galton /ˈfrɑːnsɪs ˈgɔːltn̩/ FRS , cousin of Douglas Strutt Galton, half-cousin of Charles Darwin, was an English Victorian polymath: anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, psychometrician, and statistician...
praised his teaching style:
He also coached Edward Routh
Edward Routh
Edward John Routh FRS , was an English mathematician, noted as the outstanding coach of students preparing for the Mathematical Tripos examination of the University of Cambridge in its heyday in the middle of the nineteenth century...
who went on to be Senior Wrangler and himself a prodigious "wrangler maker". In 1833, Hopkins published Elements of Trigonometry and became distinguished for his mathematical knowledge.
There was a famous story that the theory of George Green
George Green
George Green was a British mathematical physicist who wrote An Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism...
(1793–1841) was almost forgotten. In 1845, Lord Kelvin (William Thomson, a young man in 1845) got some copies of Green's 1828 short book from William Hopkins. Subsequently, Lord Kelvin helped to make Green's 1828 work famous according to the book "George Green" written by D.M. Cannell.
Geology
About 1833, through meeting Adam SedgwickAdam Sedgwick
Adam Sedgwick was one of the founders of modern geology. He proposed the Devonian period of the geological timescale...
at Barmouth
Barmouth
Barmouth ; Y Bermo ) is a town in the county of Gwynedd, north-western Wales, lying on the estuary of the River Mawddach and Cardigan Bay.The town is served by Barmouth railway station.- History :...
and joining him in several excursions, he became intensely interested in geology
Geology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...
. From then on, in papers published by the Cambridge Philosophical Society
Cambridge Philosophical Society
The Cambridge Philosophical Society is a scientific society at University of Cambridge. It was founded in 1819. The name derives from the medieval use of the word philosophy to denote any research undertaken outside the fields of theology and medicine...
and the Geological Society of London
Geological Society of London
The Geological Society of London is a learned society based in the United Kingdom with the aim of "investigating the mineral structure of the Earth"...
, he defined the discipline of physical geology, making mathematical investigations dealing with the effects that an elevatory force, acting from below, would produce on a portion of the Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
's crust
Crust (geology)
In geology, the crust is the outermost solid shell of a rocky planet or natural satellite, which is chemically distinct from the underlying mantle...
, in fissures and fault
Geologic fault
In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock, across which there has been significant displacement along the fractures as a result of earth movement. Large faults within the Earth's crust result from the action of tectonic forces...
s. In this way he discussed the elevation and denudation of the Lake District
Lake District
The Lake District, also commonly known as The Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous not only for its lakes and its mountains but also for its associations with the early 19th century poetry and writings of William Wordsworth...
, the Weald
Weald
The Weald is the name given to an area in South East England situated between the parallel chalk escarpments of the North and the South Downs. It should be regarded as three separate parts: the sandstone "High Weald" in the centre; the clay "Low Weald" periphery; and the Greensand Ridge which...
en area, and the Bas Boulonnais.
Hopkins conceived of a largely solid but dynamic Earth threaded with cavities whereby hot vapours or fluid
Fluid
In physics, a fluid is a substance that continually deforms under an applied shear stress. Fluids are a subset of the phases of matter and include liquids, gases, plasmas and, to some extent, plastic solids....
s could create locally elevatory pressures. Such a model was at odds with the ideas of Charles Lyell
Charles Lyell
Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, Kt FRS was a British lawyer and the foremost geologist of his day. He is best known as the author of Principles of Geology, which popularised James Hutton's concepts of uniformitarianism – the idea that the earth was shaped by slow-moving forces still in operation...
whose theory was of a "steady state" with a largely liquid
Liquid
Liquid is one of the three classical states of matter . Like a gas, a liquid is able to flow and take the shape of a container. Some liquids resist compression, while others can be compressed. Unlike a gas, a liquid does not disperse to fill every space of a container, and maintains a fairly...
terrestrial interior, inside a solid crust no more than 100 miles thick. Hopkins presented a series of papers at the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
between 1838 and 1842 analysing the Earth's rotation, including its precession
Precession
Precession is a change in the orientation of the rotation axis of a rotating body. It can be defined as a change in direction of the rotation axis in which the second Euler angle is constant...
and nutation
Nutation
Nutation is a rocking, swaying, or nodding motion in the axis of rotation of a largely axially symmetric object, such as a gyroscope, planet, or bullet in flight, or as an intended behavior of a mechanism...
, and using observations to support his theory, contending that they were inconsistent with a fluid interior. He also interpreted earthquake
Earthquake
An earthquake is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. The seismicity, seismism or seismic activity of an area refers to the frequency, type and size of earthquakes experienced over a period of time...
s and volcano
Volcano
2. Bedrock3. Conduit 4. Base5. Sill6. Dike7. Layers of ash emitted by the volcano8. Flank| 9. Layers of lava emitted by the volcano10. Throat11. Parasitic cone12. Lava flow13. Vent14. Crater15...
es through the same model in an 1847 British Association report.
As part of his investigations, Hopkins sought to quantify the effects of enormous pressure
Pressure
Pressure is the force per unit area applied in a direction perpendicular to the surface of an object. Gauge pressure is the pressure relative to the local atmospheric or ambient pressure.- Definition :...
s on the melting point
Melting point
The melting point of a solid is the temperature at which it changes state from solid to liquid. At the melting point the solid and liquid phase exist in equilibrium. The melting point of a substance depends on pressure and is usually specified at standard atmospheric pressure...
and thermal conductivity
Thermal conductivity
In physics, thermal conductivity, k, is the property of a material's ability to conduct heat. It appears primarily in Fourier's Law for heat conduction....
of various substances. With the support of a grant from the Royal Society, he invoked the assistance of Thomson, James Prescott Joule
James Prescott Joule
James Prescott Joule FRS was an English physicist and brewer, born in Salford, Lancashire. Joule studied the nature of heat, and discovered its relationship to mechanical work . This led to the theory of conservation of energy, which led to the development of the first law of thermodynamics. The...
and William Fairbairn
William Fairbairn
Sir William Fairbairn, 1st Baronet was a Scottish civil engineer, structural engineer and shipbuilder.-Early career:...
to make measurements which he interpreted as supporting his theory. He further asserted that the cooling of the Earth had had no real impact on climate
Climate
Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elemental measurements in a given region over long periods...
. He read a paper to the Geological Society On the Causes which may have produced changes in the Earth's superficial Temperature (1851). In his second address as president of the Geological Society of London (1853) he criticized Elie de Beaumont's theory of the elevation of mountain-chains and the imperfect evidence on which he saw it as resting.
Ultimately, it was Thomson who tactfully pointed out that, though Hopkins's conclusions about the Earth's structure were correct, his mathematical and physical reasoning was unsound.
Glaciology
He wrote also on the motion of glacierGlacier
A glacier is a large persistent body of ice that forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. At least 0.1 km² in area and 50 m thick, but often much larger, a glacier slowly deforms and flows due to stresses induced by its weight...
s and the transport of glacial erratic
Glacial erratic
A glacial erratic is a piece of rock that differs from the size and type of rock native to the area in which it rests. "Erratics" take their name from the Latin word errare, and are carried by glacial ice, often over distances of hundreds of kilometres...
s but trespassed on the sensitivities of J. D. Forbes
James David Forbes
James David Forbes was a Scottish physicist and glaciologist who worked extensively on the conduction of heat and seismology. Forbes was a resident of Edinburgh for most of his life, educated at the University and a professor there from 1833 until he became principal of the United College of St...
who saw the subject as his personal fiefdom and was contemptuous of Hopkins's lack of observational experience in the subject.
Private life
Hopkins enjoyed musicMusic
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
, poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
and landscape painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
. He spent the end of his life in a lunatic asylum
Mental Hospital
Mental hospital may refer to:*Psychiatric hospital*hospital in Nepal named Mental Hospital...
in Stoke Newington
Stoke Newington
Stoke Newington is a district in the London Borough of Hackney. It is north-east of Charing Cross.-Boundaries:In modern terms, Stoke Newington can be roughly defined by the N16 postcode area . Its southern boundary with Dalston is quite ill-defined too...
. He died there of chronic mania
Mania
Mania, the presence of which is a criterion for certain psychiatric diagnoses, is a state of abnormally elevated or irritable mood, arousal, and/ or energy levels. In a sense, it is the opposite of depression...
and exhaustion.
He had, with his second wife, one son and three daughters, among them morality campaigner Ellice Hopkins
Ellice Hopkins
Ellice Hopkins was a Victorian social campaigner and author, who vigorously advocated moral purity while criticizing contemporary sexual double standards. In 1874 she established the Soldier's Institute at Portsmouth, and in 1876 toured several British towns, recruiting thousands of women to the...
.
Honours
- Fellow of the Royal Society, 1 June 1837;
- Geological Society of LondonGeological Society of LondonThe Geological Society of London is a learned society based in the United Kingdom with the aim of "investigating the mineral structure of the Earth"...
:- Wollaston MedalWollaston MedalThe Wollaston Medal is a scientific award for geology, the highest award granted by the Geological Society of London.The medal is named after William Hyde Wollaston, and was first awarded in 1831...
, (1850); - PresidentPresident of the Geological Society of LondonThe President of the Geological Society of London is the President of the Geological Society of London.- List of presidents :* 1807 - 1813 George Bellas Greenough* 1813 - 1815 Henry Grey Bennet* 1815 - 1816 William Blake* 1816 - 1818 John MacCulloch...
(1851);
- Wollaston Medal
- President of the British Association, (1853).