Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/398

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Joly
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Joly de Lotbinière

print. Joly made considerable additions, including an appendix of 114 pages; the first volume of the new edition was published in 1899, and the second in 1901. While occupied with this work, Joly communicated several memoirs to the Royal Irish Academy: 'Astatics and quaternion functions,' 'Properties of the general congruency of curves,' and 'Some applications of Hamilton's operator in the calculus of variations' were all read in 1899; in the first, quaternions are applied to the geometry of forces, in the second to pure geometry, and in the third to some of the equations of mathematical physics. Early in the following year he presented a paper 'On the place of the Ausdehnungslehre in the general associative algebra of the quaternion type,' in which he showed that Grassmann's analysis for n dimensions, which is distributive but only partially associative, may be regarded as a limited form of the associative algebra of n + 1 dimensions. In the course of the following five years Joly continued his labours in such memoirs (in the publications of the Royal Irish Academy or the Royal Society) as 'Integrals depending on a single quaternion variable'; 'The multilinear quaternion function'; 'The interpretation of a quaternion as a point symbol'; 'Quaternion arrays'; 'Representation of screws by weighted points'; 'Quaternions and projective geometry'; 'The quadratic screw-system'; 'The geometry of a three-system of screws,' and 'Some new relations in the theory of screws.' Finally in 1905, the centenary year of Hamilton's birth, he brought out 'A Manual of Quaternions,' which at once superseded all other introductory works on the subject. During Joly's tenure of the office of royal astronomer he directed much observational work, the fruits of which appeared in the 'Dunsink Observations and Researches.' In 1900 he accompanied an eclipse expedition to Spain, and obtained some excellent photographs of totality; an account of the results was published in 'Trans. R.I.A.' xxxii. p. 271. He also edited Preston's 'Theory of Light' (3rd edit. 1901). He was elected F.R.S. in 1904, and was a trustee of the National Library of Ireland and president of the International Association for Promoting the Study of Quaternions. Of outdoor sports he was fondest of climbing, being a member of the Alpine Club from 1895 to death. In literature he was well versed in Dante's work. Joly died at the observatory of pleurisy following typhoid fever on 4 Jan. 1906; he was buried at Mount Jerome cemetery, Dublin. On 20 March 1897 Joly was married to Jessie, youngest daughter of Robert Warren Meade of Dublin. His wife and three daughters survived him.

[Personal knowledge; private information from the surviving relatives of Dr. Joly; Proc. Roy. Soc. 78A; Monthly Notices Roy. Astronom. Soc. lxvi. 177; Alpine Journal, 1906.]


JOLY DE LOTBINIÈRE, Sir HENRY GUSTAVE (1829–1908), Canadian politician, born on 5 Dec. 1829 at Épernay, France, was son of Gaspard Joly, the owner of famous vineyards at Épernay, who became seigneur of Lotbinière, Canada, on his marriage with Julie Christine, daughter of Chartier de Lotbinière, speaker of the Quebec Assembly (1794–7). His mother's grandfather, Gaspard Michel Chartier de Lotbinière, marquis de Lotbinière, served as one of Montcalm's engineers at Quebec. In 1888 Henry assumed his mother's surname of de Lotbinière with the sanction of the Quebec legislature. He received his education at the Sorbonne in Paris, and joining his father at Lotbinière, was called to the bar of Lower Canada in 1855.

In Canada Joly early espoused the liberal cause in politics, and represented Lotbinière in the Canadian House of Assembly in 1861. In 1864 he effectively attacked the Taché-Macdonald government for remitting the canal dues, and subsequently supported Sir Antoine Aimé Dorion [q. v. Suppl. I] in his opposition to the federation movement. On the passing of the British North America Act he sat for his old constituency both in the first federal House of Commons at Ottawa and in the Quebec Legislative Assembly from 1867 to 1874. In the latter year a law was passed enacting that no one should hold a seat in both legislatures. Joly accordingly resigned his seat in the federal house and devoted his energies to the leadership of the liberal opposition in the Quebec Assembly. In 1872 he obtained the appointment of a parliamentary committee to inquire into corrupt practices. In 1874 and again in 1877 he declined the offer of a seat in the senate. In 1878 on the dismissal of the Boucherville ministry Luc Letellier St. Just, lieut.-governor of Quebec, called on Joly to form an administration. His government had only a bare majority, and his proposal to abolish the upper house led to its defeat after eighteen months of office. During that brief period