William Kingdon Clifford, mathematician and gymnast

Clifford invented Clifford algebras, and also proposed (without much detail) that the forces of nature should be looked at as due to the curvature of space. He attended King's College London, and so was our best student ever. He entered at 15 and went to Cambridge at 18; he was probably registered at King's College School, but attended the university programme instead of that of the school. He died in Madeira of comsumption ( = TB), and was carried back by his wife to be buried in Highgate Cemetry. See the short article, by Hanna Nencka and J.-P. Bourguignon, xv-xvi in "Geometry and Nature", Contemporary mathematics, 203, (Amer Math Soc) 1997. This is the proceedings of the Madeira Conference in honour of W. K. Clifford, in which my paper [118], 1997, appears.

I thank Raghu Raghavan for pointing out a mistake in a previous version of this page.