Note 7 — Chapter III

It is rather strange that the ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica contains no biography of Green. Born in the year 1793 at Nottingham, the son of a baker, he assisted his father, who latterly acquired a miller's business at the neighbouring village of Sneinton. In 1829 his father died, and he disposed of the business in order that he might have leisure to give to mathematics, in which, though entirely self-taught, he had begun to make original researches. His famous 'Essay' was published by subscription in 1828, and attracted but little attention. In 1833, at forty years of age, Green entered at Gonville and Caius College, and obtained the fourth place in the mathematical tripos of 1837, the year of Griffin, Sylvester, and Gregory. His university career, whatever else it may have done, apparently did not tend to make his earlier work much better known to the general scientific public, and he died in 1841 without the scientific recognition which was his due. That came later when, as stated below, Thomson discovered him to the French mathematicians and republished his 'Essay.'