Person: Hart, Andrew Searle
Andrew Hart was an Irish mathematician who wrote on geometry.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- The Rev George Hart was a curate to the Dean of Derry and then the rector of Castlebar, County Mayo.
- Andrew Hart was a pupil at Foyle College in Londonderry.
- In addition to this schooling, Andrew also had lessons from a private tutor.
- At Trinity College, Hart was one year ahead of Charles Graves who entered in 1829.
- At the time when Hart began his studies William Rowan Hamilton was Andrews' Professor of Astronomy in Trinity College Dublin while Franc Sadleir (1775-1851) was Erasmus Smith professor of mathematics.
- Hart graduated with a B.A. in 1833 and he was awarded the Science medal for his excellent performance.
- Hart was elected a fellow of Trinity College, on 15 June 1835.
- We note that James Booth, who was four years older than Hart, took the fellowship examinations for the first time in the same year but failed to gain a fellowship.
- In the autumn of 1835 Hart began legal training when he entered King's Inns, Dublin and in 1836 he enrolled in Gray's Inn, London.
- Henry Chichester Hart's most important work was the book Flora of the County Donegal.
- In the 1840s Hart published two mathematics books, An elementary treatise on mechanics (First edition 1844, Second edition 1847) and An elementary treatise on hydrostatics and hydrodynamics (First edition 1846, Second edition 1850).
- In addition to his position as a fellow of Trinity College, where he was connected to the School of Engineering, Hart also served as Professor of Real and Personal Property in King's Inns, Dublin.
- Hart published a number of papers on geometry.
- This paper was written after an investigation which had been suggested by William Rowan Hamilton in a letter he wrote to Hart.
- In addition Hart corresponded with George Salmon on the same topic.
- This paper contains the result which became known as Hart's theorem.
- In the present chapter we show how, given any three circles in a plane, we can add to them another circle, which we call the Hart circle, such that the four circles are all touched by four other circles (Hart, 'Quart.
- In six of these ways, the four circles chosen have a common orthogonal circle; and the four circles consisting of the original circles, and their Hart circle, have also a common orthogonal circle.
- The latter theorem, which is an extension of that of Feuerbach, is essentially due to Hart.
- Returning to look at Hart's career, he was made a Senior Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin on 10 July 1858 and was also the College bursar.
- Hart was one of the three and they achieved their aim since the bill was narrowly defeated by just three votes.
- In 1876 Hart was elected as vice-provost of Trinity College.
- This meant that over the following few years Hart undertook many of the duties of the provost.
- Hart never gave up his mathematical studies and published On Nine-Point Contact of Cubic Curves (1875), On the Intersections of Plane Curves of the Third Order (1879), On Twisted Quartics (1884) and On the Linear Relations between the Nine Points of Intersection of a System of Plane Cubic Curves (1887).
- The Headmaster of Foyle College in 1886 was Maurice Hine and he wrote to Hart to congratulate him on his knighthood.
- They lived at Kilderry House, Kilderry, County Donegal, and it was in their house that Hart suddenly died aged 79 years.
Born 14 March 1811, Limerick, Ireland. Died 13 April 1890, Kilderry, County Donegal, Ireland.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Origin Ireland
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
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- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
