Rev. Hamnet Holditch, also spelled Hamnett Holditch (1800 – 12 December 1867), was an English mathematician who was President of

Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Gonville and Caius College, often referred to simply as Caius ( ), is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1348, it is the fourth-oldest of the University of Cambridge's 31 colleges and one of th ...

. In 1858, he introduced the result in

geometry Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is c ...

now known as

Holditch's theorem In plane geometry, Holditch's theorem states that if a chord of fixed length is allowed to rotate inside a convex closed curve, then the locus of a point on the chord a distance ''p'' from one end and a distance ''q'' from the other is a closed ...

. Hamnet Holditch was born in 1800 in

King's Lynn King's Lynn, known until 1537 as Bishop's Lynn and colloquially as Lynn, is a port and market town in the borough of King's Lynn and West Norfolk in the county of Norfolk, England. It is located north of London, north-east of Peterborough, no ...

, the son of George Holditch,

pilot An aircraft pilot or aviator is a person who controls the flight of an aircraft by operating its directional flight controls. Some other aircrew members, such as navigators or flight engineers, are also considered aviators, because they a ...

and harbour-master. Educated at King's Lynn Grammar School under Rev. Martin Coulcher, he matriculated at

in 1818, and graduated

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

in 1822 (

Senior Wrangler The Senior Frog Wrangler is the top mathematics undergraduate at the University of Cambridge in England, a position which has been described as "the greatest intellectual achievement attainable in Britain." Specifically, it is the person who a ...

and 1st

Smith's Prize The Smith's Prize was the name of each of two prizes awarded annually to two research students in mathematics and theoretical physics at the University of Cambridge from 1769. Following the reorganization in 1998, they are now awarded under the n ...

M.A. A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...

in 1825. At Gonville and Caius College, Holditch was a junior fellow fron 1821 and a senior fellow from 1823, and held the college posts of lecturer in Hebrew and Greek, registrar, steward, salarist (1823–28), bursar (1828–31), and President (1835–67). He died at Gonville and Caius College on 12 December 1867, aged 67, and was buried at North Wootton. Although Holditch produced ten mathematical papers, he was extremely idle as a tutor.

John Venn John Venn, Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS, Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, FSA (4 August 1834 – 4 April 1923) was an English mathematician, logician and philosopher noted for introducing Venn diagrams, which are used in l ...

, an undergraduate at Caius in the 1850s then a Caius Fellow from 1857, noted that Holditch, despite his succession of college offices, "beyond a few private pupils, never took part in educational work": He was the only son of George Holditch, and had two sisters.

Bibliography

*Rev. Hamnett Holditch, "Concise Demonstration of the Property of the Parabola", ''The London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science'', vol. 10, 1837, pp. 35–36.
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*Hamnett Holditch, "On Rolling Curves", ''Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society'', vol. 7, (1842), pp. 61–86.
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*Rev. H. Holditch, "On Small Finite Oscillations", ''Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society'', Volume the Eighth, Cambridge, 1849, pp. 89–104.
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*Rev. Hamnet Holditch, "On the Caustic by Reflection from a Spherical Surface", ''The Quarterly Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics'', vol. 1, London, 1857, pp. 93–111.
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*Rev. Hamnet Holditch, "Geometrical Theorem", ''The Quarterly Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics'', vol. 2, London, 1858, p. 38.
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*Rev. Hamnet Holditch, "On the n^th Caustic, by Reflexion from a Circle", ''The Quarterly Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics'', vol. 2, London, 1858, pp. 301–322.
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*Rev. Hamnet Holditch, "On the n^th Evolutes and Involutes of Curves", ''The Quarterly Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics'', vol. 3, London, 1860, pp. 236–246.
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*Rev. Hamnet Holditch, "Theorems on Related Curves", ''The Quarterly Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics'', vol. 3, London, 1860, pp. 271–274.
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*Rev. Hamnet Holditch, "On Double Tangents", ''The Quarterly Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics'', vol. 4, London, 1861, pp. 28–44.
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*Rev. Hamnet Holditch, "On a Magic Square", ''The Quarterly Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics'', vol. 6, London, 1864, pp. 181–189.
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References

The Last Will and Testament of Hamnet Holditch
{{DEFAULTSORT:Holditch, Hamnet 1800 births 1867 deaths Senior Wranglers Fellows of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Geometers 19th-century English mathematicians