Henry Frederick Baker, 1866-1956

Abstract

Henry Frederick Baker, who died in Cambridge on 17 March 1956, was at the time of his death the senior Fellow of the Royal Society, having been elected in 1898. To the present generation of mathematicians he is known chiefly as the founder of a vigorous school of geometry, but in fact his contributions to knowledge in that field, to which the second half of his life was devoted, only represent about half of his mathematical work, and the range which he covered goes far beyond the bounds of geometry. While much of his earlier work has been overtaken by the march of time, his contributions to the theory of functions, differential equations, and continuous groups had in their day as much influence as his later work on geometry, and any attempt to review Baker’s contributions to mathematics must take as much account of his early work as of his later contributions. Baker was born in Cambridge on 3 July 1866, the son of Henry Baker and his wife Sarah Anne. Little is known about his early years in Cambridge, but at the age of eleven he came under instruction from the Rev. Frederick Hatt, later headmaster of Moulton Grammar School, Spalding, who sent him in for the examinations of the Science and Art Department of the Committee in Council on Education. The examinations were on sound, light and heat, electricity and magnetism, animal physiology, physiography, geology, and mathematics. In later years, Baker referred to this period of his life more than once, attributing to the instruction he then received his lasting interest in natural science, and in particular he gratefully acknowledged the debt he owed to Mr Hatt. Except for mathematics, which was a regular school subject, the instruction he received consisted of one lecture a week on each subject. The pupils took no notes, and little practical work was done, but they were encouraged to do things for themselves.