William Kingdon Clifford

William Kingdon Clifford ( born May 4, 1845 in Exeter, Devon, England; † March 3, 1879 in Madeira, Portugal ) was a British philosopher and mathematician.

Life and work

Clifford was still a schoolboy on by his talent both in mathematics as in literature and classical languages ​​( and in turn sports). From 1860 he studied at King's College London and in 1863 at Trinity College, Cambridge. In the Tripos examinations, he was Second Wrangler (second ) and 1869 Fellow of Trinity College. In 1870 he took part in a solar eclipse expedition, in which he suffered in Sicily shipwreck. In 1871 he became Professor of Mathematics and Mechanics at University College London. Three years later he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. Due to revision in 1876, he suffered a first health breakdown, after which he sought rest in Algeria and Spain. After 18 months he returned in 1878 returned briefly to England, but then went back on vacation. He died at the age of 33 in Madeira.

Clifford developed the theory of Biquaternionen, a generalization of Hamilton's quaternions. More generally, the eponymous Clifford algebras. In these algebras also a function theory was developed, called Clifford analysis. Also named after him are the Clifford -Klein spaces. He was influenced by the work of Bernhard Riemann, differential geometry and is also known for a short essay On the space theory of matter in 1870, anticipated the ideas of general relativity by Albert Einstein, by looking at the motion of matter as a consequence of the curvature of space that would spread wavy (but of course without the space - time concept ). In the article he refers directly to Bernhard Riemann 's habilitation lecture, Clifford 1873 translated into English. In 1876, he showed the topological equivalence of a Riemann surface to a closed surface with holes .. after him Clifford parallels are named (an analogue of the parallel term than two lines with constant distance in non-Euclidean spaces, where the Clifford parallels not lie in a plane ).

He was known as an outstanding teacher and for his scientific philosophical essays. He also wrote a book about fairy tales for children The little people. His wife Lucy Clifford (1846-1929), born in Lane, whom he married in 1875, was a writer. Together they had in London a literary circle that met weekly on Sundays at them. After the death of Clifford his wife continued the salon. For Friends of the circle included a mix of scientists and writers, including Thomas Huxley, John Tyndall, Robert Louis Stevenson, George Eliot, Frederick Pollock, Leslie Stephen (the father of Virginia Woolf ), James Clerk Maxwell. As a widow Lucy Clifford was a friend of Henry James.

From his philosophical essays, he has been the author of the expressions Mind -Stuff and Tribal Self ( the responsibility of the individual for the group to which he belongs, puts it) in the English language known. Clifford took a monistic philosophy of the unity of consciousness and matter. He was vehemently against against obscurantist tendencies and for example, wrote in his essay The Ethics of Belief, 1877: It is at any time, any place and for any wrong to believe something because of insufficient evidence (it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence ). This was at the time, seen as a direct attack on religious thinkers who advocated a blind faith. The well-known philosopher William James joined with Clifford Clifford contrary in his Will to Believe lectures.

Writings

  • Elements of Dynamics, two volumes, Macmillan 1878 and 1887
  • Seeing and thinking, London, Macmillan 1879, 1890
  • Common sense of the exact sciences, New York, Appleton, 1885 (edited by Karl Pearson ), 1888, new edition by James R. Newman in 1946 with preface by Bertrand Russell
  • Lectures and essays by the late William Kingdon Clifford (Editor Leslie Stephen, Frederick Pollock ), Macmillan 1879, 1886, 1901
  • Ethics of belief and other essays, Prometheus 1999
  • Conditions of mental development, and other essays, New York 1885
  • Selected works, New York, Humboldt publishing, 1889
  • Mathematical Papers, Macmillan 1882 ( editor Robert Tucker, Foreword by Henry John Stephen Smith, 658 pages), reprint Chelsea 1968
  • Mathematical fragments, being facsimiles of his unfinished papers Relating to the theory of graphs, London, Macmillan 1881
  • Clifford: postulate of the Science of Space
Clifford-Algebra Complex analysis Monism The Will to Believe Jean-Pierre Bourguignon Integrated Authority File
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