10th January 1865
My dear General,
I wrote to Mr. Gassiot2 a few days ago suggesting that the Scientific Relief Fund3 had a very high claimant in the person of the widow4 of the late Prof. Boole.5 I did this knowing, that he could not have left her a proper provision, and knowing also that he had left five little children behind him. The immediate cause of my writing however was a letter recovered by a friend of mine from one of the professors in Trinity-College Dublin and in which the Scientific relief fund was referred to.
But on consideration & enquiring I fear a movement in this direction might be distasteful to Mrs. Boole. Her husband was a man of great independence of spirit, and from what I once saw of his extremely intelligent wife here in London I should judge her to be the same. Under the circumstances, and considering the great and exceptional eminence of Prof. Boole, it seems more desirable that some form of aid, more worthy of him, should be extended to his widow & children. I believe an effort will be made to obtain a pension for her, and no doubt any memorial to this effect would be backed by many of the most eminent names in this country.
Believe me | Yours ever truly | J. Tyndall
RI MS JT/2/10/324
This is a draft copy; the original handwritten version is missing.
Mr. Gassiot: Gassiot initiated the fund. See RS Minutes of Council 3 (1858–69), p. 24. See also F. G. Donnan, ‘The Scientific Relief Fund and Its Committee’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 7 (1950), pp. 158–71.
Scientific Relief Fund: started in 1859 by the Philosophical Club of the RS, this fund served to assist scientists by protecting their occupation or providing a spouse with assistance upon their death.
widow: Mary Boole (née Everest, 1832–1916), a self-taught mathematician and author of popular and instructional works on mathematics. She married George Boole in 1855, and edited his The Laws of Thought (1864). Following her husband’s death she was offered the post of librarian at Queen’s College, London. She went on to write on evolution, spiritualism, and anarchist politics (ODNB).
Prof. Boole: George Boole (1815–64), an English mathematician, philosopher, and logician. He was the first professor of mathematics at Queen’s College, Cork in Ireland, where he met his future wife Mary Everest. Booke was the author of The Laws of Thought (1864). He developed pneumonia as a result of walking three miles in heavy rain to his university and lecturing in wet clothes. His wife believed that his illness, caused by water, would be cured by water, and so subjected him to regular dousings of cold water. He died on 8 December 1864 of fever-induced pleural effusion (ODNB).
Please cite as “Tyndall2213,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on