| Previous | (Chronologically) | Next | Biographies Index
|
| Previous | (Alphabetically) | Next | Welcome page |
a fine philosophical preacher, and greatly mourned when he died.
Anstice wrote three mathematical papers in his six years in the parish. The first was On the motion of a free pendulum while the other two are both on combinatorics both being entitled On a problem in combinations.
The two papers on combinatorics deal with Kirkman triple systems. Anstice gives an infinite family of cyclic Steiner triple systems 40 years before Netto. He also gives Room squares a century before the paper by T G Room from which they were named.
Anstice gave examples of 2-rotational Kirkman triple systems which remained the only ones known until 1971.
His remarkable results seem to have been little noticed. Anstice, however, also appears to have failed to realise the importance of his work as he end one paper with the comment
But too much space has been already devoted to such a trifle.
Reference (One book/article)