| Description | Letters and manuscripts, 1727-1857 and undated, on scientific subjects collected by John Thomas Graves, comprising letters to and from the Rev Thomas John Hussey, 1822-1847 and undated, the correspondents including Henry Clark, Sir John Frederick William Herschel, Sir John William Lubbock, Augustus de Morgan, William Price and Joseph von Utzschneider; letters, 1745-1779, to John Nourse, bookseller, on scientific publications from scientists including William Emerson; miscellaneous letters, 1727-1857 and undated, the writers and recipients including George Spencer Churchill, 3rd Duke of Marlborough, Isaac Dalby, Olinthus Gregory, Sir William Rowan Hamilton and William Roy; undated translation of an inscription on a stone found among the ruins of ancient Babylon, by William Price; miscellaneous notes, tables, etc, 1817-1847 and undated, comprising printed material and undated manuscript material on scientific subjects including astronomy, some relating to Thomas Hussey. |
| AdminHistory | Born in Dublin, 1806; undergraduate at Trinity College, Dublin; distinguished himself in science and classics; a contemporary and friend of Sir William Rowan Hamilton; researches respecting exponential functions led him to important results, 1826; graduated BA, 1827; printed in the 'Pilosophical Transactions' the discovery of two arbitrary and independent integers in the complete expression of an imaginary logarithm, and considered it a solution for various difficulties that had perplexed mathematicians, believing that he had elucidated the subject of the logarithms of negative and imaginary quantities, 1829; removed to Oxford and became an incorporated member of Oriel College, 1830; entered the King's Inns, Dublin, 1830; MA, Oxford, 1831; MA, Dublin, 1832; called to the English bar as member of the Inner Temple, 1831; for a short time went on the western circuit; since his mathematical conclusions were not at first universally accepted by contemporaries such as Sir John Herschel, he communicated to the British Association a defence and explanation of his discovery, supported by Sir William Rowan Hamilton's paper published in the British Association's 'Report', 1834; corresponded for many years with Hamilton, also interested in algebraical science and imaginaries, who communicated his discovery of quaternions to Graves first of all, and acknowledged his debt to his friend for his stimulus in 1843; Graves continued his mathematical investigations; stimulated Sir William Rowan Hamilton in the study of polyhedra, and received from him the first intimation of the discovery of the icosian calculus; contributed various papers on mathematical subjects to the 'Philosophical Magazine', 'London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine' and others, 1836-1856; member of the committee of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge; elected a member of the Royal Society, 1839; subsequently sat on its council; Professor of Jurisprudence, University College London, 1839-1843; elected an examiner in laws in the University of London; twelve lectures on the law of nations were reported in the 'Law Times' from 1845; a member of the Philological Society and of the Royal Society of Literature; appointed an assistant Poor Law Commissioner, 1846; appointed a poor-law inspector of England and Wales, 1847; died, 1870. Publications: articles on Roman law and canon law for the 'Encyclopdia Metropolitana' ; articles in Sir William Smith's 'Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography' (3 volumes, London, 1844-1849), including lives of the jurists Cato, Crassus, Drusus, Gaius, and an article on the legislation of Justinian; various scientific papers. |
| CustodialHistory | The papers formed part of the library of John Thomas Graves, which included manuscripts dating from the 15th to the 19th century and relating mainly to mathematics and astronomy. |