It is not perhaps surprising that James Maurice Wilson became a ‘schoolmaster’ and ‘divine’, for that was a family tradition; that the Dictionary of National Biography should describe him also as scholar, mathematician, astronomer and antiquary gives an even greater indication of his remarkable all-round ability. As he himself put it, ‘I had no special aim or bent in life; but if circumstances showed me that something ought to be done, and no one else came forward to do it, I thought that I ought to try’ (1).

SCHOOLING

Wilson was born, one of twins, at King William's College in the Isle of Man in November 1836. His father, the first principal of the College, an Anglican institution established in 1833 {2}, was soon to leave teaching to become a parish priest, but it was to King William's that Wilson returned to begin his formal education in 1848. They were not happy times; the school was cheap and attracted a mixed clientèle. Those of ‘good birth’ were ‘swamped in a very rough lot’ and there was a considerable amount of bullying and cruelty {3}. Neither could young Wilson find much consolation in his lessons, for ‘no one on the staff was a scholar, and no one even a tolerable mathematician’. When he, with the aid of a textbook, learned some algebra, his solutions of ordinary quadratics ‘were kept and copied by the Principal, in case anyone in the future should reach such a high-water mark’.