John Kells Ingram (7 July 1823 – 1 May 1907) was an Irish mathematician, economist and poet. He has been co-credited, along with John William Stubbs, with introducing the geometric concept of inversion in a circle.
Born~Died Jul 7, 1823 ~ May 1, 1907Last edited Oct 15, 2026, 6:34 PM
John Kells Ingram (7 July 1823 – 1 May 1907) was an Irish mathematician, economist and poet. He has been co-credited, along with John William Stubbs, with introducing the geometric concept of inversion in a circle.12
This page is based on “John Kells Ingram” from English Wikipedia, (r1360000472) CC BY-SA 4.0 used under the license. The original authors are listed in its page history.
Ingram's father died in 1829 and his mother then moved with the family to Newry, to guarantee the best possible education for her five children. Ingram first went to Mr. Lyons' School in Newry from 1829 to 1837. He also attended Drogheda Grammar School.
On 13 October 1837, he matriculated at Trinity College Dublin. He was elected a Scholar of the college in 1840, graduated with a BA in mathematics in 1842, and was awarded an MA in 1850. He was a member of the College Historical Society.4 His early scholarly publications (1842–1847) were in mathematics.5 He had a distinguished career at Trinity, spanning over fifty-five years, as a student, fellow and professor, successively of Oratory, English Literature, Jurisprudence and Greek, LL.D, FTCD), subsequently becoming the College Librarian and ultimately its Vice Provost.36
One evening in March 1843 Ingram wrote the poem for which he is best remembered, a political ballad called "The Memory of the Dead" (better known as "Who Fears to Speak of '98"; or "Ninety Eight"), in honour of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 led by the United Irishmen. On that evening, he was in company of his like-minded friends John O'Regan, Thomas O'Regan and George Ferdinand Shaw, all fellow Protestant students at TCD. They spent the evening discussing the 1798 Rebellion when briefly Catholics and Protestants (mainly Presbyterians and Methodists) united to try to overturn the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland from which all of them were excluded. They were stirred by the lack of regard shown for the Irish rebels of 1798 by the contemporary nationalist movement, led by Daniel O'Connell.6
The poem was published anonymously on 1 April 1843 in Thomas Davis's The Nation Newspaper although in fact its authorship was an open secret in Dublin.5The Nation was the publication of the radical and bourgeois-radical wing of Ó Conaill's movement for "repeal" of the Act of Union between Ireland and Great Britain. Despite this poem, Ingram showed no nationalist sympathies at any time, maintaining that Ireland was not ready for self-government. "'The Memory of the Dead' was my only contribution to the 'Nation'," commented Ingram later.7 Nevertheless, before he died, Ingram made a manuscript copy of "Ninety Eight", proclaiming that he would always defend brave men who opposed tyranny.8
It was set to music for voice and piano in 1845 by John Edward Pigot.6 Ingram's ballad was translated into Latin by Robert Yelverton Tyrrell and into Irish by Dr. Douglas Hyde. The song became a popular Irish nationalist anthem. It is one of the best-known of Irish Republican songs and often played by the piper at Republican funerals.
In his later career Ingram became interested in the nascent disciplines of sociology and economics. He was not a trained economist but rather a sociologist and his early economic writings dealt mainly with the Poor Law. He was a spokesman for historical economics in Britain and influenced many contemporary social and economic thinkers at that time in Great Britain, the United States, and continental Europe. His attack on classical economics encompassed its methodology and its conclusions. Ingram played an important role in the English Methodenstreit (Battle of methods), (closely associated with the Werturteilsstreit). In his 1888 History of Political Economy he used the term "economic man" as a critical description of the human being as conceived by economic theory, and he may have coined the term. From 1891 to 1896 Ingram wrote entries in Palgrave's Dictionary of Economics. He was president of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland between 1878 and 1880 and took over as President of the Royal Irish Academy when William Reeves died in 1892.10
He also wrote on labour and trade issues, and connecting these to slavery, including domestic slavery in Europe from ancient times onward. His book, A History of Slavery and Serfdom was extremely successful, being translated into eleven languages and serving as a textbook till the 1920s. He also wrote the entries on sumptuary laws and slavery in the 9th,9 10th9 and 11th editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Paul O'Higgins attributes the phrase "labour is not a commodity" to Ingram, who used it in 1880 during a Dublin meeting of the British Trades Union Congress. It appears as a principle in the preamble to the International Labour Organization's founding documents.11
Ingram was active in the fields of mathematics, archaeology, the classics, economics, etymology, law, literature, medieval manuscripts, poetry, religious speculation and Shakespearean criticism. He wrote extensively on Shakespearean syntax. He worked on advancing the science of classical etymology, notably in his Greek and Latin Etymology in England.
Ingram spoke up for the access of female students to Trinity College. In his function as college librarian, he first opened Trinity College Library so that the general public could see great Irish literary treasures such as the Book of Kells.
Death
Ingram died in 1907 in his house, 38 Upper Mount Street, Dublin, where he had lived since 1884, and was buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery.
Ingram's influence on economics was described by economist Richard Theodore Ely as:
A more humane and genial spirit has taken the place of the old dryness and hardness which once repelled so many of the best minds from the study of Economics and won for it the name of 'the dismal science'. In particular, the problem of the Proletariat, of the condition and future of the working classes- has taken a powerful hold on the feelings, as well as the intellect, of Society, and is studied in a more earnest and sympathetic spirit than at any former time.
Publications
Non-fiction works
1843 – Geometrical properties of certain surfaces, Transactions of the Dublin University Philosophical Society, Vol. I, pp. 57–63, 1843
1843 – On chordal envelopes, Transactions of the Dublin University Philosophical Society, Vol. I, pp. 156–158, 1843
1843 – On the properties of inverse curves and surfaces, Transactions of the Dublin University Philosophical Society, Vol. I, pp. 159–162, 1843
1844 – XXVIII. New properties of surfaces of the second degree. To the editors of the Philosophical Magazine and Journal, Philosophical Magazine Series 3, Volume 25, Issue 165 September 1844, pages 188–192
1861 – On the opus majus of Roger Bacon, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Ser. 1, Vol. VII, pp. 9–15, 1857–61
1864 – Considerations on the State of Ireland, Edward Ponsonby, Dublin 1864
1874 – Greek and Latin etymology in England, Hermathena: a Dublin University review, Vol. I, No. II, pp. 407–440, 1874
1863 – Notes on Shakespeare's historical plays, Trinity College Library, Ms. I. 6. 40
1863 – A paper on the chronological order of Shakespeare's plays, Trinity College Library, Ms. I. 6. 34
1863 – Latin etymological notes, by John Kells Ingram, Dublin: National Library of Ireland, Ms. 253
1864 – A comparison between the English and Irish poor laws with respect to the conditions of relief, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, Vol. IV, pp. 43–61, May 1864
1873 – Miscellaneous notes, Hermathena: a Dublin University review, Vol. I, No. 1, pp. 247–250, 1873
1875 – Commonplace book of J. K. Ingram, 1880-1. Address by Ingram to the Dublin Shakespearean Society, 10 Dec 1875, Trinity College Library, Mss. I. 6. 36–37
1875 – On thama and thamakis in Pindar, Hermathena: a Dublin University review, Vol. II, No. III, pp. 217–227, 1875
1875 – Address at the opening of the twenty-ninth session; the organisation of charity and the education of the children of the state, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, Vol. VI, pp. 449–473, December 1875
1876 – Bishop Butler and Mr. Matthew Arnold, a note, Hermathena: a Dublin University review, Vol. II, No. IV, pp. 505–506, 1876
1876 – Greek and Latin etymology in England, No. II., Hermathena: a Dublin University review, Vol. II, No. IV, pp. 428–442, 1876
1876 – Additional facts and arguments on the boarding-out of pauper children, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, Vol. VI, pp. 503–523, February 1876
(Later published as: – Additional facts and arguments on the boarding-out of pauper children: being a paper read before the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland on Tuesday, 18 January, Dublin, Edward Ponsonby, Dublin 1876)
1876 – Address of the President of Section F of the British Association, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, August 1876
1879 – [The Present Position and Prospects of Political Economy, Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 1879
1880 – Work and the workman : being an address to the Trades Union Congress in Dublin, September 1880 , Eason & Son, Dublin 1928
1881 – Report of Council on Mr. Jephson's suggestions as to Census for 1881, Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 1881
1881 – Etymological notes on Liddell and Scott's lexicon, Hermathena: a Dublin University review, Vol. IV, No. VII, pp. 105–120, 1881
1881 – Work and the workman: an address to the Trades' Union Congress, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, Vol. VIII, pp. 106–123, January 1881
1882 – On Two Collections of Mediaeval Moralized Tales, Dublin 1882
1883 – Notes on Latin lexicography, Hermathena: a Dublin University review, Vol, IV, No, VIII, pp. 310–316, 1882, No. IX, pp. 402–412, 1883
1896 – An address delivered before the Royal Irish Academy on 24 February 1896, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin 1896
1888 – A correction, Hermathena: a Dublin University review, Vol. VI, No. XIV, pp. 366–367, 1888
1888 – On a fragment of an ante-Hieronymian version of the Gospels, in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin. See also Ser.2, Vol. III, Pp. 374–5, 1845–7, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Polite Literature and AntiquitiesSer. 2, Vol. II, pp. 22–23, 1879–88
1888 – A History of Political Economy Edinburgh, Adam & Charles Black, London 1888; Macmillan, New York 1894; McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, number ingram1888 (on line)], Dodo Press, 2008, ISBN978-1-4099-5901-4
1888 – Essays in Political Economy
1889 – Memoir of the late William Neilson Hancock, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, Vol. IX, pp. 384–393, August 1889
1889 – Memoir of the late William Neilson Hancock, LL.D., Q.C, Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 1881 –
1891 – Presidential Address reviewing the affairs of the Academy since its foundation, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Ser. 3, Vol. II, (Appendix) pp. 107–28, 1891–3
1892 – The past and present work of the Royal Irish Academy : an address delivered at the stated meeting of that body, 30 November 1892, Ponsonby & Weldrick, Dublin 1892
1893 – Etymological notes on Lewis and Short's Latin dictionary -, Hermathena: a Dublin University review, Vol. VIII, No. XIX, pp. 326–343, 1893
1893 – English translation of the first three books of Thomas à Kempis – De imitatione Christi – by JKI
(16 editions published between 1893 and 1987 in English, held by 331 libraries worldwide)
1893 – Etymological notes on Lewis and Short's Latin dictionary -13
1895 – A History of Slavery and Serfdom, Adam & Charles Black, London 1895; Macmillan, New York 1895 (reprinted Lightning Source (2007), ISBN1-4304-4390-1)
Properties of the cardioide have been obtained by the method of inversion by JK Ingram and JW Stubbs, Dublin Phil Soc Trans I, 1842-43. ↩
Curves and Their Properties by Robert C. Yates, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Inc., Washington, D.C., p. 127: "Geometrical inversion seems to be due to Jakob Steiner who indicated a knowledge of the subject in 1824. He was closely followed by Adolphe Quetelet (1825) who gave some examples. Apparently independently discovered by Giusto Bellavitis in 1836, by Stubbs and Ingram in 1842-3, and by Lord Kelvin in 1845.)" ↩
"Appendix: Biographical Notices of John Kells Ingram and Robert Atkinson". Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Section C. Vol. 27. Royal Irish Academy. 1908. pp. 1–19. JSTOR25502772. (1908/1909). ↩↩2↩3↩4↩5
John Kells Ingram (7 July 1823 – 1 May 1907) was an Irish mathematician, economist and poet. He has been co-credited, along with John William Stubbs, with introducing the geometric concept of inversion in a circle.12
Ingram's father, Rev. William Ingram, a scholar at Trinity College Dublin, rector of the Church of Ireland and curate of (), married Elizabeth Cooke in 1817.
Ingram's father died in 1829 and his mother then moved with the family to Newry, to guarantee the best possible education for her five children. Ingram first went to Mr. Lyons' School in Newry from 1829 to 1837. He also attended Drogheda Grammar School.
On 13 October 1837, he matriculated at Trinity College Dublin. He was elected a Scholar of the college in 1840, graduated with a BA in mathematics in 1842, and was awarded an MA in 1850. He was a member of the College Historical Society.4 His early scholarly publications (1842–1847) were in mathematics.5 He had a distinguished career at Trinity, spanning over fifty-five years, as a student, fellow and professor, successively of Oratory, English Literature, Jurisprudence and Greek, LL.D, FTCD), subsequently becoming the College Librarian and ultimately its Vice Provost.36
One evening in March 1843 Ingram wrote the poem for which he is best remembered, a political ballad called "The Memory of the Dead" (better known as "Who Fears to Speak of '98"; or "Ninety Eight"), in honour of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 led by the United Irishmen. On that evening, he was in company of his like-minded friends John O'Regan, Thomas O'Regan and George Ferdinand Shaw, all fellow Protestant students at TCD. They spent the evening discussing the 1798 Rebellion when briefly Catholics and Protestants (mainly Presbyterians and Methodists) united to try to overturn the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland from which all of them were excluded. They were stirred by the lack of regard shown for the Irish rebels of 1798 by the contemporary nationalist movement, led by Daniel O'Connell.6
The poem was published anonymously on 1 April 1843 in Thomas Davis's The Nation Newspaper although in fact its authorship was an open secret in Dublin.5The Nation was the publication of the radical and bourgeois-radical wing of Ó Conaill's movement for "repeal" of the Act of Union between Ireland and Great Britain. Despite this poem, Ingram showed no nationalist sympathies at any time, maintaining that Ireland was not ready for self-government. "'The Memory of the Dead' was my only contribution to the 'Nation'," commented Ingram later.7 Nevertheless, before he died, Ingram made a manuscript copy of "Ninety Eight", proclaiming that he would always defend brave men who opposed tyranny.8
It was set to music for voice and piano in 1845 by John Edward Pigot.6 Ingram's ballad was translated into Latin by Robert Yelverton Tyrrell and into Irish by Dr. Douglas Hyde. The song became a popular Irish nationalist anthem. It is one of the best-known of Irish Republican songs and often played by the piper at Republican funerals.
In his later career Ingram became interested in the nascent disciplines of sociology and economics. He was not a trained economist but rather a sociologist and his early economic writings dealt mainly with the Poor Law. He was a spokesman for historical economics in Britain and influenced many contemporary social and economic thinkers at that time in Great Britain, the United States, and continental Europe. His attack on classical economics encompassed its methodology and its conclusions. Ingram played an important role in the English Methodenstreit (Battle of methods), (closely associated with the Werturteilsstreit). In his 1888 History of Political Economy he used the term "economic man" as a critical description of the human being as conceived by economic theory, and he may have coined the term. From 1891 to 1896 Ingram wrote entries in Palgrave's Dictionary of Economics. He was president of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland between 1878 and 1880 and took over as President of the Royal Irish Academy when William Reeves died in 1892.10
He also wrote on labour and trade issues, and connecting these to slavery, including domestic slavery in Europe from ancient times onward. His book, A History of Slavery and Serfdom was extremely successful, being translated into eleven languages and serving as a textbook till the 1920s. He also wrote the entries on sumptuary laws and slavery in the 9th,9 10th9 and 11th editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Paul O'Higgins attributes the phrase "labour is not a commodity" to Ingram, who used it in 1880 during a Dublin meeting of the British Trades Union Congress. It appears as a principle in the preamble to the International Labour Organization's founding documents.11
Ingram was active in the fields of mathematics, archaeology, the classics, economics, etymology, law, literature, medieval manuscripts, poetry, religious speculation and Shakespearean criticism. He wrote extensively on Shakespearean syntax. He worked on advancing the science of classical etymology, notably in his Greek and Latin Etymology in England.
Ingram spoke up for the access of female students to Trinity College. In his function as college librarian, he first opened Trinity College Library so that the general public could see great Irish literary treasures such as the Book of Kells.
Death
Ingram died in 1907 in his house, 38 Upper Mount Street, Dublin, where he had lived since 1884, and was buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery.
Ingram's influence on economics was described by economist Richard Theodore Ely as:
A more humane and genial spirit has taken the place of the old dryness and hardness which once repelled so many of the best minds from the study of Economics and won for it the name of 'the dismal science'. In particular, the problem of the Proletariat, of the condition and future of the working classes- has taken a powerful hold on the feelings, as well as the intellect, of Society, and is studied in a more earnest and sympathetic spirit than at any former time.
Publications
Non-fiction works
1843 – Geometrical properties of certain surfaces, Transactions of the Dublin University Philosophical Society, Vol. I, pp. 57–63, 1843
1843 – On chordal envelopes, Transactions of the Dublin University Philosophical Society, Vol. I, pp. 156–158, 1843
1843 – On the properties of inverse curves and surfaces, Transactions of the Dublin University Philosophical Society, Vol. I, pp. 159–162, 1843
1844 – XXVIII. New properties of surfaces of the second degree. To the editors of the Philosophical Magazine and Journal, Philosophical Magazine Series 3, Volume 25, Issue 165 September 1844, pages 188–192
1861 – On the opus majus of Roger Bacon, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Ser. 1, Vol. VII, pp. 9–15, 1857–61
1864 – Considerations on the State of Ireland, Edward Ponsonby, Dublin 1864
1874 – Greek and Latin etymology in England, Hermathena: a Dublin University review, Vol. I, No. II, pp. 407–440, 1874
1863 – Notes on Shakespeare's historical plays, Trinity College Library, Ms. I. 6. 40
1863 – A paper on the chronological order of Shakespeare's plays, Trinity College Library, Ms. I. 6. 34
1863 – Latin etymological notes, by John Kells Ingram, Dublin: National Library of Ireland, Ms. 253
1864 – A comparison between the English and Irish poor laws with respect to the conditions of relief, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, Vol. IV, pp. 43–61, May 1864
1873 – Miscellaneous notes, Hermathena: a Dublin University review, Vol. I, No. 1, pp. 247–250, 1873
1875 – Commonplace book of J. K. Ingram, 1880-1. Address by Ingram to the Dublin Shakespearean Society, 10 Dec 1875, Trinity College Library, Mss. I. 6. 36–37
1875 – On thama and thamakis in Pindar, Hermathena: a Dublin University review, Vol. II, No. III, pp. 217–227, 1875
1875 – Address at the opening of the twenty-ninth session; the organisation of charity and the education of the children of the state, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, Vol. VI, pp. 449–473, December 1875
1876 – Bishop Butler and Mr. Matthew Arnold, a note, Hermathena: a Dublin University review, Vol. II, No. IV, pp. 505–506, 1876
1876 – Greek and Latin etymology in England, No. II., Hermathena: a Dublin University review, Vol. II, No. IV, pp. 428–442, 1876
1876 – Additional facts and arguments on the boarding-out of pauper children, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, Vol. VI, pp. 503–523, February 1876
(Later published as: – Additional facts and arguments on the boarding-out of pauper children: being a paper read before the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland on Tuesday, 18 January, Dublin, Edward Ponsonby, Dublin 1876)
1876 – Address of the President of Section F of the British Association, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, August 1876
1879 – [The Present Position and Prospects of Political Economy, Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 1879
1880 – Work and the workman : being an address to the Trades Union Congress in Dublin, September 1880 , Eason & Son, Dublin 1928
1881 – Report of Council on Mr. Jephson's suggestions as to Census for 1881, Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 1881
1881 – Etymological notes on Liddell and Scott's lexicon, Hermathena: a Dublin University review, Vol. IV, No. VII, pp. 105–120, 1881
1881 – Work and the workman: an address to the Trades' Union Congress, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, Vol. VIII, pp. 106–123, January 1881
1882 – On Two Collections of Mediaeval Moralized Tales, Dublin 1882
1883 – Notes on Latin lexicography, Hermathena: a Dublin University review, Vol, IV, No, VIII, pp. 310–316, 1882, No. IX, pp. 402–412, 1883
1896 – An address delivered before the Royal Irish Academy on 24 February 1896, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin 1896
1888 – A correction, Hermathena: a Dublin University review, Vol. VI, No. XIV, pp. 366–367, 1888
1888 – On a fragment of an ante-Hieronymian version of the Gospels, in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin. See also Ser.2, Vol. III, Pp. 374–5, 1845–7, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Polite Literature and AntiquitiesSer. 2, Vol. II, pp. 22–23, 1879–88
1888 – A History of Political Economy Edinburgh, Adam & Charles Black, London 1888; Macmillan, New York 1894; McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, number ingram1888 (on line)], Dodo Press, 2008, ISBN978-1-4099-5901-4
1888 – Essays in Political Economy
1889 – Memoir of the late William Neilson Hancock, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, Vol. IX, pp. 384–393, August 1889
1889 – Memoir of the late William Neilson Hancock, LL.D., Q.C, Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 1881 –
1891 – Presidential Address reviewing the affairs of the Academy since its foundation, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Ser. 3, Vol. II, (Appendix) pp. 107–28, 1891–3
1892 – The past and present work of the Royal Irish Academy : an address delivered at the stated meeting of that body, 30 November 1892, Ponsonby & Weldrick, Dublin 1892
1893 – Etymological notes on Lewis and Short's Latin dictionary -, Hermathena: a Dublin University review, Vol. VIII, No. XIX, pp. 326–343, 1893
1893 – English translation of the first three books of Thomas à Kempis – De imitatione Christi – by JKI
(16 editions published between 1893 and 1987 in English, held by 331 libraries worldwide)
1893 – Etymological notes on Lewis and Short's Latin dictionary -13
1895 – A History of Slavery and Serfdom, Adam & Charles Black, London 1895; Macmillan, New York 1895 (reprinted Lightning Source (2007), ISBN1-4304-4390-1)
Properties of the cardioide have been obtained by the method of inversion by JK Ingram and JW Stubbs, Dublin Phil Soc Trans I, 1842-43. ↩
Curves and Their Properties by Robert C. Yates, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Inc., Washington, D.C., p. 127: "Geometrical inversion seems to be due to Jakob Steiner who indicated a knowledge of the subject in 1824. He was closely followed by Adolphe Quetelet (1825) who gave some examples. Apparently independently discovered by Giusto Bellavitis in 1836, by Stubbs and Ingram in 1842-3, and by Lord Kelvin in 1845.)" ↩
"Appendix: Biographical Notices of John Kells Ingram and Robert Atkinson". Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Section C. Vol. 27. Royal Irish Academy. 1908. pp. 1–19. JSTOR25502772. (1908/1909). ↩↩2↩3↩4↩5