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Life
| 1819-1904; b. 25 Sept.; son of a Michael Salmon, linen merchant and his wife (née Weekes, a clergyman’s dg.), Cork; ed. Hamblin and Porter school, Cork; mat. 1833; entered TCD at 14; grad. 1st Snr. Mod, Maths. and Physics, 1838; Fellow, 1841 [aetat. 22]; lecturer in divinity and mathematics; MRIA, 1843; deacon, 1844; ord. 1845; m. Francis Anne Salvador (d.1878), dg. Church of England minister, 1844; lived on Wellington Rd., Dublin; elected Chancellor St. Patrick’s Cathedral; D.D., 1859; succeeded Charles Gravers as Erasmus Smith Prof. on Mathematics, TCD; much influenced by Jean-Victor Poncelet’s Traité des proprieétés projective des figures (1822), which outlined basis of projective geometric; his best-known work A Treatise on Conic Sections (1848), was followed by Treatise on the Higher Plane Curves (1852), of which a 2nd edn. (1873) incls. additions by Arthur Cayley; Introductory to the Modern Higher Algebra (1859); A Treatise on the Analytic Geometry of Three Dimensions (1862); retired from mathematical research, c.1860; |
| elected Regius Professor of Divinity, in succession to Samuel Butcher, 22 Dec. 1866; became intensely active in the so-called ‘revision’ [viz., revisionist] controversy between evangelical and high-church elements in the Church of Ireland after Disestablishment, 1867, and issued Non-Miraculous Christianity (1881), Introduction to the New Testament (1885), and A Historical Introduction to the Study of the New Testament (in Ecclesiastical Record, 1886) being based on a lecture course; issued Lectures The Infallibility of the Church (1889) - a celebrated attack on Pope Pius IX’s doctrinal decision on that point of Catholic theology which remained in print up 1997 and afterwards; also The Human Element in the Gospels (post. 1907), as well as Lives of the Saints: A Lecture (1863); held chancellorship of St Patrick’s Cathedral from 1871 until his death; protected the 1662 Book of Common Prayer from radical revision; received doctorates from Cambridge, Oxford and Edinburgh; |
| elected Provost of TCD, 1888-1904, succeeding Jellett; d. 22 Jan. 1904; bur. Mount Jerome, with family members; survived by two children of six born; donated monies to the College for foundation of Salmon fund; there is a seated statue by John Hughes in marble at Front Square, TCD - which was restored after severe maltreatment by undergraduates; also a portrait by Benjamin Constant at TCD [senior common-room]; Salmon was related to Edward Dowden through his mother’s family; he have resisted the admission of women to Trinity College - reputedly saying, ‘Over my dead body will women enter this college’ but later acceded to the measure in his capacity as Provost in 1901; a certain Isabel Marion Weir Johnston of Derry became the first woman to enter TCD, in the year of his death, 1904; a great-granddaughter of Salmon’s attended Trinity in the late 1960s. DIW ODNB DIB [FDA] OCIL |
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| Statue of Prov. Salmon by John Hughes at TCD Front Square (Irish Times, 5 Feb. 2021.) |
| Did he or didn’t he? |
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Works| Mathematical works |
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| Theological works |
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Criticism
Donald Akenson, The Church of Ireland: Ecclesiastical Reform and Revolution 1800-1885 (Yale UP 1971); Rod Gow, ’George Salmon 1819-1904’, in Creators of Mathematics: The Irish Connection, ed. Ken Houston (Dublin: UCD Press 2000), pp.39-45.
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Commentary
F. Zimmerman, S.J., review of A Historical Introduction to the Study of the New Testament, by George Salmon, in Ecclesiastical Record, 3rd Ser., Vol. VII, (Dublin: Fowler 1886): ‘A defence of the traditional belief in the authenticity and integrity of the Sacred Books of the New Testament by a writer of such ability as Dr. Salmon must be welcome. Though his work is apologetic, he has fairly grappled with the difficulties, and refuted the objections of his opponents. Dr. Salmon is acquainted with the works of Protestant interpreters of Germany, but takes no notice of Catholic interpreters, in whose books he might have found far better arguments against the rationalistic views of the modern school of criticism than are his own [...] Dr. Salmon (p.470) gives a very good reason for this by comparing St. Paul to Xenophon, whose vocabulary was so much modified by travelling. While the first and second books of the “Hellenica” are written in pure Attic, and contain few Doricisms and lonicisms, the latter books are full of un-Attic words picked up from his changing surroundings. He also refers to Dr. Stanley-Leathes, who shows that a different vocabulary is by no means a proof of different authorship, as is seen by comparing the vocabulary of Milton’s Allegro to the Pensoroso and to Lycidas. [...] Having quoted so much of what is good in Dr. Salmon’s book, we may as well point out some of the inaccuracies and deficiencies. The historical part of the book is incomplete. We find no history of the lives of the writers, no characteristics of the men and their styles, no analyses of their books; the reader is not furnished with sufficient details so as to be able to judge for himself. The account of the origin of the Synoptic Gospels is singularly defective. [...] The assertion that the brothers of Jesus were not cousins of Our Lord, but sons of Joseph from a former marriage, is unfounded. [.. &c.]. (663-65.)’, pp.663-68. (For longer extract, see attached.)
Gordon H. Davies, ‘Irish Thought in Science’, Richard Kearney, ed. The Irish Mind: Exploring Intellectual Traditions (Dublin: Wolfhound 1984), remarks, ‘It needs to be emphasised that ... in Salmon’s Conic Sections we see an Irish mind at work just as surely as we see de Valera’s mind at work in Ireland’s 1937 constitution’ (p.310.)
“Women at Trinity” [q. author], feature (Irish Times Magazine, 17 April 2004), which shows Frances Ruane, Professor of Economics and the first woman to contest the election for Provostship in 2001, also notes that Salmon - before whose statue she is photographed - said that women would enter Trinity ‘over my dead body’.
J. Ossory, Dictionary of National Biography [entry on Salmon]: ‘Hospitable and kindly, Salmon had many friends and interests. In youth a competent musician and a chess played of remarkable powers, he cultivated both recreations until an advanced age. He was an omnivorous reader ... and had a special affection for the older novelists ... The homely vigour and delightful wit of the long letters which he was accustomed to write to his friends entitle him to rank as one of the best letter writers of the [19th] century.’ (Quoted in Kibitzer’s Corner - Chessgames Reader Commentary - online; accessed 12.12.2022.)
[Note: contributors make the point that Salmon referred to chess in his discussion of Papal Infallibility which he regarded as the all-important question in the debate - rather as if a chessplayer takes various of his enemies pieces but loses if he is checkmated. Salmon accredits the analogy to Archbishop Whately and calls it is called ‘a favourite illustration’ of his (Whately’s).]
Lookleft Nua in “Come Here to Me” (Dublin community website) - on Salmon: "[...] Salmon, as well as being a highly regarded mathematician and theologian, was a one time Provost of the institution, a deeply conservative figure who firmly opposed the admittance of women to Trinity. “If a female had once passed the gate ... it would be practically impossible to watch what buildings or what chambers she might enter, or how long she might remain there” wrote the Board of Trinity College in 1895, capturing the spirit of the institution in Salmon’s time. It was somewhat ironic the first female student at Trinity College Dublin was to arrive soon after his death in January 1904. On the far side of the Campanile sits a fine memorial to historian W.E.H Lecky.&#'46'; (9 March 2012.)
Note: The columnist adds that the statue was made by Hughes in his Paris studio from photographs and was not greeted as a thing of beauty. Also quotes Owen Sheehy-Skeffington writing in The Irish Times at the date of its being moved to Front Square in 1964: ‘It is not a work of outstanding artistic distinction, but it has a rugged honesty that of the &l#147;warts and all” type which accords well with the fearlessness and integrity of Salmon the man.’ (Available on online; accessed 12.12.2022.)
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References
Belfast Public Library holds A Treatise on Conic Sections (1848); also and A Short View of the Families of the present Irish Nobility, by a ‘Mr. Salmon’ (1759).
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Notes
John Hughes: The statue at Front Square was sculpted by Hughes in his Paris studio Galway Marble (1911) and originally installed in the Museum Building before moving to the small lawn adjacent to the Library and the sports fields where it was the target of a paint attack by persons unknown in 1961 before joining that of W. E. H. Lecky at the Campanile in 1964. there is an oil portrait by Sarah Purser.
William Carleton: In “The Poor Scholar”, Carleton’s alter ego James McEvoy, is sent off to Maynooth by his old school-teacher Corcoran, who tells him he is going to ‘that country where the swallows fly in conic sections, where the magpies and turkeys confab in Latin, and the cows and bullocks will roar at you in Doric Greek.’ (Quoted in Maurice Harmon, Introduction to Carleton, Wild Goose Lodge and Other Stories, Cork: Mercier 1973, p.xiv.)
| More conic sections ... |
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| —“The March of Intellect” (first pub. in “Noctes Ambrosianiae”, Blackwood’s Magazine (Dec. 1825); see further under Oliver Goldsmith > “Intellect” - as infra. Salmon is too late to be considered a source but the ballad - actually by John Croker Wilson and erroneously ascribed to Goldsmith by Colm Ó Lochlainn - demonstrates that the term was in circulation in 1825, and perhaps as early as 1810. |
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James Joyce: Joyce mentions Salmon twice in Ulysses (1922) - first time as the resident of the Provost’s House (1 Grafton St.) and second time as a possible career-model for Leopold Bloom:
‘Provost’s house. The reverend Dr Salmon: tinned salmon. Well tinned in there. Wouln’t live in it if they paid me. Hope they have liver and bacon today. Nature abhors a vacuum.’ (Lestrygonians episode, Bodley Head Edn., 1960, p.208.)
‘In the church, Roman, Anglican, or Nonconformist: exemplars, the very reverend John Conmee S.J., the reverend T. Salmon, D.D., provost of Trinity college, Dr Alexander J. Dowie. At the bar, English or Irish: exemplars, Seymour Bushe, K.C., Rufus Isaacs, K.C. On the stage, modern or Shakespearean exemplars, Charles Wyndham, high comedian, Osmond Tearle (1901), exponent of Shakespeare.’ (Ithaca episode, Bodley Head Edn, 808.)
The first reference is strictly inaccurate since Salmon died in Jan. 1904 and was no longer resident in the Provost’s House in June 1904 when the novel is set. (Joyce’s allusion to ‘tinned salmon’ is thought to be an error rather than a grim joke; See Sam Slote, Annotations to Ulysses, rev. edn. 2023.) Whether it is Bloom of Joyce that does not know this is a moot point.
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Protestant Gothic: In “The Judge’s House” by J. S. Le Fanu, Malcolm Malcolmson throws some books at the malignant rat who pesters him in his rooms. The books in question were A Treatise on Conic Sections (1848), and William Rowan Hamilton’s Quaternions - ‘though not as effacacious as the Bible’.
Douglas Hyde: At the Historical Society in College, Douglas Hyde spoke on ‘Celts and Teutons’ and ‘Irish Rule in Ireland’, during 1885. In a paper entitled ‘The Attitude of the Reformed Church in Ireland’ at the Theo[logical Society], he argued that the Anglicans should sympathise with the nationalists, and was disparaged by Dr. Salmon. Hyde reported in his diary, ‘Salmon in particular said he would not have come had be known what I was going to read.’ (See Dominic Daly, The Young Douglas Hyde, 1974, p.54-55). Note further that Salmon backed Hyde’s application for chair of History and English at Queens, Sept 1891. (ibid., p.150.)
Benjamin Constant [sic] (1845-1902) is the author of a portrait of Salmon at TCD (see Anne Crookshank, Irish Portraits Exhibition, Ulster Museum 1965).
Great-granddaughter: Jane Marriott of Robertsbridge, Sussex, a great-granddaughter of George Salmon, attended Trinity College, Dublin, in the late 1960s.
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