Person: Haughton, Samuel
Samuel Haughton was an Irish mathematician, geologist and priest who published on a wide variety of topics. He is remembered for his work on hanging as a humane method of execution.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- Samuel Haughton Sr. was a merchant living at Burrin House, County Carlow.
- Samuel Haughton was brought up in Carlow where he attended the Carlow Diocesan School in Church Lane.
- Haughton, however, had a wide range of interests and was taught Hebrew, botany, chemistry and astronomy by the Rev John Emerson of Mayo.
- Emerson also taught him about the geology of the Leinster coalfield, thus giving Haughton an interest in a topic that he would study for most of his life.
- As a Quaker, Haughton would not have been eligible to study at Trinity College, Dublin.
- At this time Trinity College, Dublin, restricted its degrees, fellowships, and scholarships to Anglicans so Haughton converted to become an Anglican.
- Haughton entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1838 where he studied mathematics and science.
- Joseph Galbraith was four years older that Haughton and graduated in 1839, four years before Haughton, but he also was awarded a fellowship in the 1844 examination.
- After his success in the fellowship examination, Haughton undertook research in applied mathematics.
- As an undergraduate he had been taught by James MacCullagh and, after taking up the fellowship, he shared a room with MacCullagh who informally took on the role of Haughton's research advisor.
- This work was highly successful and, in 1848, Haughton was awarded the Cunningham medal by the Royal Irish Academy for his paper On the laws of equilibrium and motion of solid and fluid bodies (1846) which he published in the Cambridge and Dublin Mathematical Journal.
- However, this outstanding work by Haughton came to an abrupt end when MacCullagh committed suicide in October 1847.
- Haughton had attended MacCullagh's lectures On the rotation of a solid body round a fixed point and he published a paper in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy in 1849 "Being an Account of the Late Professor MacCullagh's Lectures on That Subject".
- In addition to his interest in mathematics, Haughton was keen on geology.
- Geology was in the School of Engineering so Haughton's work remained totally within this School.
- His geological researches eventually, and quite typically of Haughton, stretched over many fields including regional geography, stratigraphy, palaeontology, mineralogy, petrology, structural geology and economic geology (mining).
- If this was not a broad enough range of topics for any single person to undertake, Haughton registered as an undergraduate in medicine in 1859.
- As soon as he had graduated, Haughton set about reforming the medical school at Trinity College which was suffering both from poor governance from the College Board, who were ignorant of medicine, and from poor teaching by staff lacking motivation.
- Haughton was appointed registrar of Trinity Medical School in 1864 and this put him in a position to carry out a series of reforms.
- The committee, chaired by Haughton, introduced a system of yearly reports so that the performance of different parts of the Medical School could be readily monitored.
- Haughton was not only concerned with improving the Medical School but he looked for reforms of the whole Irish education system.
- We have looked at many positive aspects of Haughton's contributions, but there was one major negative contribution.
- Haughton must have seen copies of these papers for as early as 9 February 1859, before the publication of Darwin's famous book, Haughton attacked the theory at a meeting of the Geological Society of Dublin.
- Haughton's continued opposition to the theory of evolution had, as one would expect, a negative effect on teaching in Trinity College Dublin for many years.
- Another aspect of Haughton's work which we choose neither to describe as a positive contribution nor as a negative one is his paper On Hanging considered from a Mechanical and Physiological point of view which was published in the London, Edinburgh and Dublin Philosophical Magazine in 1866.
- Haughton argued that any humane hanging required a drop of sufficient length so that the person's neck was broken.
- His calculations, which were known as 'Haughton's Drop', were used in hanging people in Britain for many years.
- Although this is quite far from the correct value of around 4600 million years, it is better than the value that Lord Kelvin had found, Kelvin's being the accepted value at the time that Haughton published his results.
- Haughton also used a variety of other techniques to find the age of the earth, one of which produced 2300 million years which he published even though it conflicted with his anti-evolutionist beliefs.
- Other work by Haughton that we should mention is the 31 papers he published on animal mechanics.
- It would appear that Haughton's ordination was mainly to obtain a fellowship but, although he had no pastoral duties, nevertheless he preached many sermons.
- Haughton received many honours including election to the Royal Irish Academy (1845), election to the Royal Society of London (1858), and honorary degrees from the University of Oxford in 1868, the University of Cambridge in 1880, the University of Edinburgh in 1884, and the University of Bologna in 1888.
- Haughton was further honoured on Sunday 25 August 2005 when a plaque was placed on the wall outside the house in Carlow in which he was born.
- As a final comment we should note that if Haughton had accepted Darwin's theory of evolution he would be better known and respected today.
Born 21 December 1821, Carlow, Ireland. Died 31 October 1897, Dublin, Ireland.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Astronomy, 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
