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 Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...

Biography

Ellis was the youngest of six children of Francis Ellis (1772–1842) of

Bath Bath may refer to: * Bathing, immersion in a fluid ** Bathtub, a large open container for water, in which a person may wash their body ** Public bathing, a public place where people bathe * Thermae, ancient Roman public bathing facilities Plac ...

and his wife Mary. Educated privately, he entered

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge or Oxford. ...

, in 1836, graduating as

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 ...

in 1840 and elected Fellow of Trinity shortly afterwards. Although he had also entered the

Inner Temple The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, commonly known as the Inner Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court and is a professional associations for barristers and judges. To be called to the Bar and practise as a barrister in England and ...

in 1838, was called to the bar in 1840, and later helped

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 ...

with jurisprudence, Ellis never practised law. He hoped unsuccessfully for the Cambridge chair of civil law. Inheriting substantial Irish estates when his father died, Ellis contemplated entering Parliament as a Whig under Sir William Napier's patronage. Yet his courtship of one of Napier's daughters ended in some confusion: Ellis never married, and never stood for Parliament. As a mathematician, Ellis founded the ''Cambridge Mathematical Journal'' with D. F. Gregory in 1837. He corresponded with Augustus De Morgan on the conjectured four color theorem. Continental travel failed to restore Ellis' health. An attack of rheumatic fever at

Sanremo Sanremo (; lij, Sanrémmo(ro) or , ) or San Remo is a city and comune on the Mediterranean coast of Liguria, in northwestern Italy. Founded in Roman times, it has a population of 55,000, and is known as a tourist destination on the Italian Rivie ...

in 1849 left him an invalid, and he returned to Cambridge, living at Anstey Hall,

Trumpington Trumpington is a village and parish to the south of Cambridge, England. The village is an electoral ward of the City of Cambridge and a ward of South Cambridgeshire District Council. The 2011 Census recorded the ward's population as 8,034. T ...

, next to his friend

John Grote John Grote (5 May 1813, Beckenham – 21 August 1866, Trumpington, Cambridgeshire) was an English moral philosopher and Anglican clergyman. Life and career The son of a banker, John Grote was younger brother to the historian, philosopher and ...

, vicar of Trumpington. From his sickbed Ellis kept up contact with the young Trinity mathematician William Walton, and dictated his thoughts on a wide range of topics, including etymology, bees' cells, Roman money, the principles of a projected Chinese dictionary, and Boole's ''

The Laws of Thought ''An Investigation of the Laws of Thought on Which are Founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities'' by George Boole, published in 1854, is the second of Boole's two monographs on algebraic logic. Boole was a professor of mathem ...

'' (1854).

Works

Ellis took on the editing of

's works with two other Trinity fellows, Douglas Denon Heath and

James Spedding James Spedding (28 June 1808 – 9 March 1881) was an English author, chiefly known as the editor of the works of Francis Bacon. Life He was born in Cumberland, the younger son of a country squire, and was educated at Bury St Edmunds and Trinit ...

. Dramatic deterioration of Ellis's health from 1847 left his work on the general prefaces to Bacon's philosophy unfinished. Spedding and Heath completed the ''Works'' in seven volumes, published 1857–1859. Ellis's own major mathematical contributions were on functional and differential equations, and the theory of probability ("On the foundations of the theory of probabilitiesW, read to the Cambridge Philosophical Society on 14 February 1842; published in the fourth volume of the ''Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society'' of 1844). Philosophically, Ellis, like

George Boole George Boole (; 2 November 1815 – 8 December 1864) was a largely self-taught English mathematician, philosopher, and logician, most of whose short career was spent as the first professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork in ...

and later

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 ...

, defended an objective rather than subjective theory of probability. William Walton edited a posthumous collection of both published and unpublished writings, in ''The mathematical and other writings of R. L. Ellis'' (1863): this was prefaced by a biographical memoir by

Harvey Goodwin Harvey Goodwin (9 October 1818 – 25 November 1891) was an English academic and Anglican clergyman, Bishop of Carlisle from 1869 until his death. Life Born at King's Lynn, he was a son of Charles Goodwin, a solicitor there; his mother was Fra ...

. Correspondence and notebooks of Ellis are amongst the Mayor Papers and Whewell Papers at

.Catalogue entries for Ellis, Robert Leslie (1817-1859) mathematician
/ref> Leslie translated

Dante Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian people, Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', origin ...

Roman law Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, including the legal developments spanning over a thousand years of jurisprudence, from the Twelve Tables (c. 449 BC), to the '' Corpus Juris Civilis'' (AD 529) ordered by Eastern Roman emperor Ju ...

texts and Danish ballads; a gentle melancholia suffuses the lines of his own poetry which he left in manuscript.

Notes

References

* Goodwin, Harvey (1863
"Biographical Memoir of Robert Leslie Ellis"
In W. Walton, ed., ''The Mathematical and other Writings of R. L. Ellis''. * Kiliç, Berna (2000) "Robert Leslie Ellis and John Stuart Mill on the one and the many of frequentism", ''British Journal for the History of Philosophy'' 8:2. * Panteki, Maria
"Ellis, Robert Leslie (1817–1859)"
''

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') was published on 23 September ...

'', Oxford University Press, 2004. * Verburgt, Lukas M. (2013
"Robert Leslie Ellis's work on philosophy of science and the foundations of probability theory"
''Historia Mathematica'' 40:4. * Verburgt, Lukas M. (2022

''A Prodigy of Universal Genius: Robert Leslie Ellis,'' 1817–1859. Springer.

External links

* * *
The Mathematical and Other Writings of Robert Leslie Ellis Edited by William Walton. With a biographical memoir by the Very Reverend Harvey Goodwin.
(London: Deighton, Bell & Co., Bell and Daldy, 1863.)
"Robert Leslie Ellis"
entry at the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive {{DEFAULTSORT:Ellis, Robert Leslie 1817 births 1859 deaths 19th-century English mathematicians Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge Francis Bacon scholars Senior Wranglers