George Salmon (1819 - 1904)

Born 25 Sep 1819 in Dublin, Ireland

Ancestors

Died 22 Jan 1904 at age 84 in Dublin, Ireland

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Biography

George Salmon is Notable.

George Salmon was born in Dublin September 1819. He was the only son of Michael Salmon, linen merchant, and Helena Weekes. Helena was daughter of the Reverend Edward Weekes.

George was baptised at St George's church, Temple Street, Dublin on 28 September 1819. Father Michael was linen merchant at the Linen Hall, Dublin, and subsequently at 80 Grand Parade, Cork.

His cousins the Dowdens were linen drapers in Cork. Cousin Alicia Dowden, (née Bennett) was the mother of the Right Reverend John Dowden (1840-1910), Scottish Episcopal bishop of Edinburgh, and Edward Dowden (1843-1913), professor of English literature and internationally respected and authoritative literary critic at Trinity College Dublin (TCD). George Salmon tutored both boys at TCD. Alicia Bennett Dowden's father, John Barter Bennett, Cork city apothecary, left a detailed manuscript account from 1786 of the agrarian protest movement of the Rightboys (1785-1788) in the eighteenth century.

George spent his boyhood in Cork City, where he attended Hamblin and Porter's School on South Mall before starting at Trinity College in 1833. In 1837 he won a scholarship and graduated from Trinity in 1839 with first-class honours in mathematics. In 1841 at the age of 21, he attained a paid fellowship and teaching position in mathematics at Trinity. In 1845 he was additionally appointed to a position in theology at the university, after having been ordained a deacon in 1844 and a priest in the Church of Ireland in 1845.

George became a distinguished and influential Irish mathematician and Anglican theologian. After working in algebraic geometry for two decades, Salmon devoted the last forty years of his life to theology. His entire career was spent at Trinity College Dublin.

Salmon was Provost of Trinity from 1888 until his death in 1904. The highlight of his career may have been when in 1892 he presided over the great celebrations marking the tercentenary of the College, which had been founded by Queen Elizabeth I.

His statue is situated at the very core of Trinity College, at the left-hand side of the Campanile, finely built in white marble. The George Salmon monument was first placed on the Trinity campus in 1911, though it didn’t sit in its current location at Parliament Square, but rather in the hall of the museum of the college. The sculpture was John Hughes, and The Irish Times noted at the time that the statue was carved of Galway marble. It was done in Hughes’ studio in Paris, based on photographs of Salmon. The statue has moved around Trinity on several occasions, beginning its life in the hall of the museum before being moved to the small lawn at the end of the library, near to the playing fields. There are portraits of Salmon in the Common Room and Provost's House of TCD.

He passed away in 1904. ^[1]

Sources

1. ↑ Source will be added by Dave Cushing by 4 May 2023.

• Wikipedia: George Salmon
• Wikidata: Item Q983374, en:Wikipedia
• https://comeheretome.com/2012/03/09/statues-of-dublin-george-salmon-trinity-college-dublin/

• https://www.dib.ie/biography/salmon-george-a7902

• The Rightboy Movement 1785-8. James S. Donnelly, Jr. and James J. Donnelly Jr. Studia Hibernica No. 17/18 (1977/1978), pp. 120-202 (83 pages)