William Briggs

RAS obituary

WILLIAM BRIGGS, who died on June 19 last at the age of seventy, is to be remembered as the originator of a system of teaching by correspondence, largely in connection with the examinations for degrees of the University of London, that has achieved much success. In the years 1883 to 1887, when engaged at St. Benedict's College, Fort Augustus, in Scotland, he inaugurated a system of this kind, and in the latter year removed to Cambridge, where he established the headquarters of the venture under the name of the University Correspondence College. He later founded the University Tutorial College, which was an organisation of classes for personal instruction in London. He had been a student at the Yorkshire College -- now Leeds University -- but entered at Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1888. He qualified for his degrees in the Mathematical Tripos of 1890 and in the Law Tripos of 1891, and was later awarded the degree of Doctorate of Law for a work on the law of copyright. The tuition scheme prospered exceedingly, and in connection with it he initiated the preparation and publication of many textbooks that developed into the University Tutorial Press in London, which has its own printing and bookbinding works at Foxton, near Cambridge, where Dr. Briggs took a close personal interest in the welfare of the village. He was a generous benefactor to Jesus College and founded a Trust for helping undergraduates of the College who required financial help to continue their education. He was a prominent Freemason and was a Past Grand Treasurer of England. Direct connections with astronomy that may be mentioned are that he was a member of the large party that made the voyage to Vadsö, Norway, to see the eclipse of the Sun in 1896, and an excellent treatise on Mathematical Astronomy by Barlow and Bryan was written at his instigation.

He joined the Society on 1894 January 12.

H. P. H.

William Briggs's obituary appeared in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 93:4 (1933), 225-226.