Robert Tucker (1832–1905) was an English

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

, who was secretary of the

London Mathematical Society The London Mathematical Society (LMS) is one of the United Kingdom's Learned society, learned societies for mathematics (the others being the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA), the Edinburgh ...

for more than 30 years.

Life and work

Son of a soldier who fought in the

Peninsular War The Peninsular War (1808–1814) was fought in the Iberian Peninsula by Kingdom of Portugal, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom against the invading and occupying forces of the First French ...

, Tucker studied at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he was 35th wrangler in 1855. He mastered mathematics at

University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

from 1865 to 1899. He is known by the now known as ''Tucker circles'', a family of circles invariant on parallel displacing. He is also known by his edition of the Mathematical Papers of

William Kingdon Clifford William Kingdon Clifford (4 May 18453 March 1879) was a British mathematician and philosopher. Building on the work of Hermann Grassmann, he introduced what is now termed geometric algebra, a special case of the Clifford algebra named in his ...

in 1882. Tucker acted as secretary of the

from 1867 to 1902. He was also a collector of mathematician's photographs. His collection, named ''Tucker collection'' is preserved by the London Mathematical Society at De Morgan house., MacTutor History of Mathematics.

References

Bibliography

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External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Tucker, Robert 19th-century English mathematicians 1832 births 1905 deaths Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge