William Clifford died in 1879 at the age of 33. During his short life, he was renowned not just as the leading mathematician of his generation, but also for his philosophy, which embraced the fundamentals of scientific thought, the nature of the physical universe, the evolution of life, the nature of consciousness, personal morality and law, and reverence for humanity and the whole mystery of being. Clifford presented these ideas, and taught the basic principles of scientific and mathematical thought, in a series of remarkably lucid public lectures and journal articles.
After holding a Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, Clifford was appointed Professor of Applied Mathematics at University College, London. Here he developed a wide circle of intellectual friends and colleagues, including Thomas Huxley, John Tyndall, Robert Louis Stevenson, George Eliot, Frederick Pollock, James Clerk Maxwell, and Leslie Stephen, father of Virginia Woolf.
The year after his election to the Royal Society in 1874, William Clifford married Lucy Lane, already an established writer in popular journals. During their four years of marriage they held Sunday salons, which were attended by many well-known figures in the scientific, political and artistic worlds. William crossed friendly philosophical swords with William James, and after his death, Lucy became a close friend and confidante of Henry James. She also maintained and extended her circle of intellectual friends, which over her fifty years of widowhood included Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, Karl Pearson, Sir Frederick Macmillan, and the distinguished Americans James Russell Lowell and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Clifford's best-known work among mathematicians and physicists is his geometric algebra. It is now widely recognised that Dirac's theory of the electron, fundamental to modern physics, is based upon a particular Clifford algebra. Clifford speculated that physical space was curved (thus partly anticipating Einstein), and thought that `the ether and matter' were made of the `same stuff'. He conjectured that atom might be the product of an evolutionary process, and described it as at least as complicated as a grand piano.
As a young widow, Lucy returned to her writing. She contributed to various periodicals, and in 1881 produced `Anyhow stories for Children'. She followed this in 1885 with the sensation of the year `Mrs Keith's Crime', which dealt with infanticide, and in 1888 with another great success `Aunt Anne'. She also had several plays produced, and was described in her obituary in The Times as a `distinguished novelist and for many years an honoured figure in literary London, a link with the great writers and scientists of the Victorian age'.
William and Lucy Clifford were well-loved and admired by those who knew them. The `Quotes and Profiles exhibition accompanying the talks portrays the sayings of forty eminent contemporaries about William and Lucy. This group includes:
| JM Barrie | Arnold Bennett | Noel Coward | Arthur Conan Doyle | George Eliot | Thomas Hardy | Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. | Thomas Huxley |
| William James | Rudyard Kipling | Felix Klein | Oliver Lodge |
| Somerset Maugham | James Clerk Maxwell | Karl Pearson | Bertrand Russell |
| George Bernard Shaw | Leslie Stephen | James Joseph Sylvester | Virginia Woolf |
Roy Chisholm is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Kent. In collaboration with Ruth Farwell, he has written numerous papers applying Clifford algebras to fundamental physical theories. In recent years, he has developed an interest in Clifford's life and philosophical work.
Monty Chisholm is Honorary Research Associate in Humanities at the University of Kent. She has studied the lives of William and Lucy Clifford. She has co-edited and published `Bravest of Women and Finest of Friends: Henry James's Letters to Lucy Clifford', and spoke on the relationship between Henry James and Lucy Clifford at a recent international literary conference. Her biography of the Cliffords should be published later this year.