Michael Roberts (mathematician)
Irish mathematician (1817-1882)
Michael Roberts (18 April 1817 – 4 October 1882), was an Irish mathematician and academic of Trinity College, Dublin (TCD), who served as Erasmus Smith's Professor of Mathematics there 1862-1879.
Life
Roberts was born into a well-established landed gentry family in County Cork, whose ancestors had settled there from Kent about 1630. His mother was of Scottish origins, descended from the Colonel Stewart who was governor of Edinburgh Castle and took part in the Jacobite rising of 1715.
Roberts had a twin brother, William, and they were educated together at Midleton School, Cork. A portrait is reported of Roberts and his twin brother at the age of sixteen. He entered TCD in 1833. He was awarded a classical scholarship in 1836, but studied mostly under the notable mathematician and natural philosopher James MacCullagh. On graduating BA in 1838, he was elected a fellow of Trinity, and in 1862 became Erasmus Smith's Professor of Mathematics, a position he held until 1879, when he was elected as Senior Fellow. In 1848 he had been appointed the first Professor of Mathematics at Queen's College, Galway, but he resigned from the position before the college opened to students in 1849.
Research
Among Roberts's earlier lectures were a series on the Theory of Invariants and Covariants, on which he published papers.
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