William Spottiswoode, President of the Royal Society, was born in London, Jan. 11, 1825. He belongs to an ancient Scottish family, many members of which have risen to distinction in Scotland and also in the New World.
In 1845 he took a first class in mathematics, and he afterward won the junior (1846) and the senior (1847) university mathematical scholarships. He returned to Oxford for a term or two, and gave a course of lectures in Balliol College on Geometry of Three Dimensions—a favorite subject of his. He was examiner in the mathematical schools in 1857-58. On leaving Oxford, he immediately, we believe, took an active part in the working management of the business of the Queen's printers, about this time resigned to him by his father, Andrew Spottiswoode, brother of the Laird of Spottiswoode. The business has largely developed under his hands.
Other subjects than mathematics have occupied his attention: at an early age he studied languages, Asian as well as European.

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