Thomas Gaskin (1810–1887) was an English clergyman and academic, now known for contributions to mathematics.

Life

After being educated at

Sedbergh School Sedbergh School is a public school (English independent day and boarding school) in the town of Sedbergh in Cumbria, in North West England. It comprises a junior school for children aged 4 to 13 and the main school for 13 to 18 year olds. It w ...

between 1822-1827, he was admitted a sizar of

St John's College, Cambridge St John's College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge founded by the House of Tudor, Tudor matriarch Lady Margaret Beaufort. In constitutional terms, the college is a charitable corpo ...

in 1827. He was Second Wrangler in the

Mathematical Tripos The Mathematical Tripos is the mathematics course that is taught in the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. It is the oldest Tripos examined at the University. Origin In its classical nineteenth-century form, the tripos was a ...

in 1831, behind

Samuel Earnshaw Samuel Earnshaw (1 February 1805, Sheffield, Yorkshire – 6 December 1888, Sheffield, Yorkshire) was an English clergyman and mathematician and physicist, noted for his contributions to theoretical physics, especially " Earnshaw's theorem". ...

. He was then a Fellow of

Jesus College, Cambridge Jesus College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college's full name is The College of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist and the glorious Virgin Saint Radegund, near Cambridge. Its common name comes fr ...

from 1832 to 1842, when he married. He became a Fellow of the

Royal Astronomical Society (Whatever shines should be observed) , predecessor = , successor = , formation = , founder = , extinction = , merger = , merged = , type = NGO ...

in 1836, and of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

in 1839. In 1840 Gaskin and his fellow examiner J. Bowstead unilaterally abolished the Tripos system of '' viva voce'' examinations in Latin, which had become an obsolete formality. Gaskin spent the latter part of his career as a private coach, moving to

Cheltenham Cheltenham (), also known as Cheltenham Spa, is a spa town and borough on the edge of the Cotswolds in the county of Gloucestershire, England. Cheltenham became known as a health and holiday spa town resort, following the discovery of mineral s ...

in 1855.

Works

Gaskin is now remembered for his work on the equation for the

figure of the Earth Figure of the Earth is a Jargon, term of art in geodesy that refers to the size and shape used to model Earth. The size and shape it refers to depend on context, including the precision needed for the model. A Spherical Earth, sphere is a well-k ...

, of

Pierre-Simon Laplace Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace (; ; 23 March 1749 – 5 March 1827) was a French scholar and polymath whose work was important to the development of engineering, mathematics, statistics, physics, astronomy, and philosophy. He summarized ...

. While it was important for

geodesy Geodesy ( ) is the Earth science of accurately measuring and understanding Earth's figure (geometric shape and size), orientation in space, and gravity. The field also incorporates studies of how these properties change over time and equivale ...

, from a Cambridge point of view its introduction to the syllabus of the Tripos, as intended by

William Whewell William Whewell ( ; 24 May 17946 March 1866) was an English polymath, scientist, Anglican priest, philosopher, theologian, and historian of science. He was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. In his time as a student there, he achieved dist ...

, proved troublesome. Whewell had George Biddell Airy write on it in his 1826 ''Tracts'', but the solution of the equation appeared unmotivated.

John Henry Pratt John Henry Pratt FRS (4 June 1809 – 28 December 1871) was a British clergyman, astronomer and mathematician. A Cambridge Apostle, he joined the British East India Company in 1838 as a chaplain and later became Archdeacon of Calcutta. Although ...

in ''Mathematical Principles of Mechanical Philosophy'' (1836) returned to the topic, clarifying it.

Alexander John Ellis Alexander John Ellis, (14 June 1814 – 28 October 1890), was an English mathematician, philologist and early phonetician who also influenced the field of musicology. He changed his name from his father's name, Sharpe, to his mother's maiden na ...

worked on the solution of the equation in 1836, as an undergraduate. Then in 1839 Gaskin produced a solution procedure by a

differential operator In mathematics, a differential operator is an operator defined as a function of the differentiation operator. It is helpful, as a matter of notation first, to consider differentiation as an abstract operation that accepts a function and return ...

method, setting the result of his investigation as a Tripos question. It immediately gained textbook status in the ''Differential Equations'' of

John Hymers John Hymers (1803–1887) was an English mathematician and cleric, and, together with his brother Robert, founder of Hymers College, Hull. Life Hymers was born 20 July 1803 at Ormesby in Yorkshire; his father was a farmer, and his mother was dau ...

. The work proved seminal, influencing

Robert Leslie Ellis Robert Leslie Ellis (25 August 1817 – 12 May 1859) was an English polymath, remembered principally as a mathematician and editor of the works of Francis Bacon. Biography Ellis was the youngest of six children of Francis Ellis (1772–1842) of B ...

to further developments of symbolic methods; and is credited with a stimulus to the ''On A General Method of Analysis'' (1844), the paper making the reputation of George Boole. Gaskin published little original mathematics by the conventional route of the

learned journal An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and d ...

; but made his research public in Tripos questions (he was an examiner six times between 1835 and 1851). Later Edward Routh commented on the extensive adoption of Gaskin's problems into the common fund of understanding of the subject.Andrew Warwick (2003), ''Masters of Theory: Cambridge and the Rise of Mathematical Physics'', p. 156 with note 90, and p. 168.

Notes

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Gaskin, Thomas 1810 births 1887 deaths 19th-century English mathematicians Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of Jesus College, Cambridge 19th-century English Anglican priests