PETER BARLOW, Esq., F.R.S., Member of the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburgh, and of the Royal Academies of Brussels, Utrecht, &c. &c., was born in the parish of St. Simon, Norwich, in Oct. 1776, and died March 1st, 1862, in the eighty-sixth year of his age. In 1801 he was appointed one of the Mathematical Masters of the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. In 1811 he published his first work, On the Theory of Numbers; in 1814, his Mathematical Dictionary; and in the same year, his "Mathematical Tables." Up to this time Mr. Barlow's pursuits had reference to abstract science. In 1815 he commenced his first attempt at the application thereof to physical science, founded on experiments on the strength of wood, iron, and other materials. This formed the basis of his work, On the Strength of Materials, published in 1817, which, being well received by the architects and civil engineers of the metropolis, led to an intimate acquaintance with the leading professors of those arts. It was also about this time that Mr. Barlow began his connection with the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, to which he largely contributed. About 1819 his mind was turned to the pursuit of magnetic experiments, in which he was very successful, as well in developing the laws of the action of magnetism as in the application of those laws to the correction of a long-standing error in navigation. Thesis formed the subject of his Essay on Magnetic Attraction, published in 1819. For this discovery he received several honorary and pecuniary rewards. In 1821 he received the Gold Medal of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts. In 1824, on the adoption of his corrections in the Russian Navy, his services were handsomely acknowledged by the Emperor Alexander. In 1825 he received the Copley Medal of the Royal Society, with pecuniary presents from all the principal Naval Boards.
The subject which had covered him with these honours and which engaged much of his attention for seven years, having been fully established in the British Navy, as well as in the navies of several foreign powers, and no longer requiring his attention, he turned to optical experiments. In 1827 he suggested a new form of refracting telescope, of which he constructed two, and laid them before the Board of Longitude, with a proposition for constructing a large national telescope, which obtained the approbation of that Board. The great difficulty of procuring flint glass for achromatic telescopes seems to have been the principal motive for attempting this novel construction, the basis of which was an object—lens of fluid encased in glass.
Mr. Barlow was a sound mathematician and was acquainted with foreign writers at a time when this could not be said of many. He showed this acquaintance in his work on the Theory of Numbers, a subject on which he has, as yet, no English successor. His tables—which give the squares, cubes, square and cube roots, reciprocals, and factors of all numbers up to 10,000—would have been exceedingly useful to all engaged in practice if the disposition had existed to believe in anything beyond a table of logarithms. As it happened, the use of them was confined to but a few of those to whom they might have benefited. The late Mr. Henderson, for instance, who discovered for himself that Crelle's multiplication table up to 1000 × 1000 is, for many purposes, a far more powerful instrument than the table of logarithms, was a constant user of Barlow's tables. The work, now out of print, contains many subsidiary matters of use and interest. What is described above, the factors excepted, was republished in stereotype, under the sanction of the Useful Knowledge Society and the superintendence of Mr. Farley, in 1840.
For many years before his death, Mr. Barlow had completely relinquished active exertion. Whether we look at his public or his private life, society may be proud of his name, which, owing to his great age and long retirement, belongs to a former day.
The subject which had covered him with these honours and which engaged much of his attention for seven years, having been fully established in the British Navy, as well as in the navies of several foreign powers, and no longer requiring his attention, he turned to optical experiments. In 1827 he suggested a new form of refracting telescope, of which he constructed two, and laid them before the Board of Longitude, with a proposition for constructing a large national telescope, which obtained the approbation of that Board. The great difficulty of procuring flint glass for achromatic telescopes seems to have been the principal motive for attempting this novel construction, the basis of which was an object—lens of fluid encased in glass.
Mr. Barlow was a sound mathematician and was acquainted with foreign writers at a time when this could not be said of many. He showed this acquaintance in his work on the Theory of Numbers, a subject on which he has, as yet, no English successor. His tables—which give the squares, cubes, square and cube roots, reciprocals, and factors of all numbers up to 10,000—would have been exceedingly useful to all engaged in practice if the disposition had existed to believe in anything beyond a table of logarithms. As it happened, the use of them was confined to but a few of those to whom they might have benefited. The late Mr. Henderson, for instance, who discovered for himself that Crelle's multiplication table up to 1000 × 1000 is, for many purposes, a far more powerful instrument than the table of logarithms, was a constant user of Barlow's tables. The work, now out of print, contains many subsidiary matters of use and interest. What is described above, the factors excepted, was republished in stereotype, under the sanction of the Useful Knowledge Society and the superintendence of Mr. Farley, in 1840.
For many years before his death, Mr. Barlow had completely relinquished active exertion. Whether we look at his public or his private life, society may be proud of his name, which, owing to his great age and long retirement, belongs to a former day.
Peter Barlow's obituary appeared in Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 23:4 (1863), 127-128.