Dates

• Existence: 1819 - 1912

Biography

Francis Bashforth (1819-1912), mathematician, was born near Doncaster in 1819. He was educated at Doncaster Grammar school and entered St John's College, Cambridge as a sizar in 1840. He was ordained priest in 1851 and in 1857 accepted the college living of Minting, near Horncastle, Lincolnshire, of which he remained rector until 1908. In 1869 Bashforth married Elizabeth Jane, daughter of the Revd Samuel Rotton Piggott, vicar of Bredgar, Kent. They had one son. His chief passion was mathematics and after a brief time in the civil service helping design railways he accepted a post as professor of applied mathematics at Woolwich, later the Artillery College. He was very interested in the science of ballistics and carried out many experiments between 1864 and 1880 on the effects of air resistance on projectiles, publishing a number of treaties on the subject. Bashforths' work was rewarded and expanded upon by the government who used his findings to improve their weaponry. He has strong claims to the authorship of the tide predictor and the chronograph he designed was a crucial instrument in his research. He retired to Linconshire in 1908 and died there in February 1912.

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