Page:Men of the Time, eleventh edition.djvu/39

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ALEXANDER.

September 1, 1806. He graduated at Union College, in 1824; and in 1834 was elected Adjunct Professor of Mathematics in the College of New Jersey. In 1840 the Professorship of Astronomy was created, and he was assigned to it. In 1845 he was transferred to the chair of Mathematics, but in 1854 exchanged it for the Professorship of Mechanics and Astronomy, which he retained until he was retired in 1878. He has published numerous papers on astronomy, mathematics, physics, &c., which have attracted the attention of eminent astronomers in Europe and America. Among these are:—"Physical Phenomena attendant upon Solar Eclipses," "Fundamental Principles of Mathematics," "On the Origin of the Forms and the present Condition of some of the Clusters of Stars," and "Harmonies in the Arrangement of the Solar System which seem to be confirmatory of the Nebular Theory of La Place." He has conducted two expeditions to make observations on solar eclipses, one to Labrador in July, 1860, and one to the West, to observe the solar eclipse of August, 1869.


ALEXANDER, The Right Rev. William, D.D., Bishop of Derry and Raphoe, son of a clergyman beneficed in the north of Ireland, and nephew of Dr. Alexander, late Bishop of Meath, and cousin of the late Earl of Caledon, was born at Londonderry in April, 1824. He was educated at Tunbridge School, and at Exeter and Brasenose Colleges, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. and M.A. Having entered holy orders, he served a curacy in the north of Ireland, and was preferred to one or two livings in the gift of the Bishop of Derry. He was formerly Rector of Camus-juxta-Morne, co. Tyrone, and Chaplain to the Marquis of Abercorn, Lord-Lieutenant of lreland. In 1864 he was nominated to the Deanery of Emly, and in 1867 was an unsuccessful candidate for the chair of poetry at Oxford. He was appointed to the Bishopric of Derry and Raphoe, rendered vacant by the death of Dr. Higgin, July 12, 1867, being consecrated in St. Columb's Cathedral, Londonderry, Oct. 13 following. Soon after his elevation to the episcopal bench he was created D.D. at Oxford. He obtained, in 1860, the university prize at Oxford for a poem on a sacred subject; has published a Theological Prize Essay, a volume of poems, several lectures and sermons, papers on the Irish Church, and on dogmatic teaching from the pulpit, among the proceedings of the Church Congresses at Norwich and York, and has been a frequent contributor of prose and verse to periodical literature. His Bampton Lectures for 1876 were published under the title of "The Witness of the Psalms to Christ and Christianity." He is married to Miss Cecil Frances Humphries, who is herself well known as the author of "Moral Songs," "Hymns for Children," and "Poems on Old Testament Subjects."


ALEXANDER, The Rev. William Lindsay, D.D., F.R.S.E., an Independent minister, was born at Edinburgh, August 21, 1808; and after a preliminary training in the High School of Leith, continued his studies at the universities of Edinburgh and St. Andrews. In 1828 he was appointed Classical Tutor in the Lancashire College, then situate at Blackburn, but subsequently removed to Manchester. He became minister of a Congregational Church in Edinburgh in 1835; Professor of Theology to the Congregationalists of Scotland in 1854; Examiner in Philosophy at St. Andrews University in 1861; and a member of the Old Testament Revision Company in 1870. Dr. Alexander's writings are— "Congregational Lecture for 1840 on the Connection and Harmony of the Old and New Testament," 2nd edit., 1853; "Anglo-Catholicism