William Clifford. 1845-1879

William Kingdon Clifford was a leading mathematician, an influential philosopher and FRS. A leading champion of Darwin's evolutionary theory, and of scientific methods of reasoning, he sought an understanding of the nature of the universe and of the human mind and morality. He was forty years ahead of Einstein in proposing the concept of curved space. Clifford Algebra, which is fundamental to Dirac's theory of the electron, has now become significant in many areas of mathematics, physics and engineering.