by Robert Steele, rev. Anita McConnell
© Oxford University Press 2004 All rights reserved
Allman, George Johnston (1824-1904), mathematician, was born on 28 September 1824 at Dublin. He was a younger son of William Allman MD (1776-1846), professor of botany in Trinity College, Dublin, and his wife, Anne (d. 1831). He entered Trinity College and after a distinguished career graduated in 1844 as senior moderator and gold medallist in mathematics with Samuel Haughton. He was also Bishop Law's mathematical prizeman and graduated LLB in 1853 and LLD in 1854. He married in 1853 Louisa (d. 1864), daughter of John Smith Taylor of Dublin and Corballis, co. Meath.
Allman was elected professor of mathematics in Queen's College, Galway, in 1853, and remained in this post until he retired in 1893, having reached the age limit fixed by civil service regulations. He was elected a member of the senate of Queen's University in 1877, and in 1880, when the Royal University of Ireland was founded, he was nominated by the crown as a life senator. He was made FRS in 1884, and awarded an honorary degree of DSc by Dublin in 1882. He contributed a few papers on mathematical subjects to scientific periodicals, besides an account of Professor James McCullagh's lectures on 'The attraction of the ellipsoid', which appears in the latter's collected works. He also wrote a number of articles in the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica on Greek mathematicians. His chief contribution to science is his History of Greek Geometry from Thales to Euclid (1889), which first appeared as articles in Hermathena. In this he traced the rise and progress of geometry and arithmetic, and threw new light on the history of the early development of mathematics. With his lifelong friend, John Kells Ingram, he was attracted to positivism, and entered into correspondence with Comte in 1852; in 1854 he went to Paris and made his personal acquaintance. His position at Galway prevented his taking any public part in the positivist movement, but his teaching was much influenced by Comte's mathematical work the Synthèse subjective, and his general theory of historical development. Allman died of pneumonia on 9 May 1904 at Farnham House, Finglas, Dublin. A son and two daughters survived him.
ROBERT STEELE, rev. ANITA MCCONNELL
Sources
B. W., PRS, 78A (1907), xii-xiii
Positivist Review, 12 (1904), 149
The Times (13 May 1904)
Likenesses
Schemboche, photograph, 1890, RS
M. A. Fox, photograph, RS
[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/30395]
GO TO THE OUP ARTICLE (Sign-in required)