Samuel Haughton

Samuel Haughton (December 21, 1821 – October 31, 1897), Irish scientific writer, the son of James Haughton (1795-1873), was born at Carlow.

His father, the son of a Quaker, but himself a Unitarian, was an active philanthropist, a strong supporter of Father Theobald Mathew, a vegetarian, and an anti-slavery worker and writer.

After a distinguished career in Trinity College, Dublin, Samuel was elected a fellow in 1844. He was ordained priest in 1847, but seldom preached. In 1851 he was appointed professor of geology in Trinity College, and this post he held for thirty years. He began the study of medicine in 1859, and in 1862 earned the degree of MD from the University of Dublin. He was then made registrar of the Medical School, the status of which he did much to improve, and he represented the university on the General Medical Council from 1878 to 1896. He was elected fellow of the Royal Society in 1858, and in course of time Oxford conferred upon him the hon. degree of DCL, and Cambridge and Edinburgh that of LL.D.

In 1866, Haughton developed the original equations for hanging as a humane method of execution, whereby the neck was broken at the time of the drop, so that the condemned person did not strangle to death. “On hanging considered from a Mechanical and Physiological point of view.” was published in the London, Endinburgh and Dublin Phiosophical Magazine and Journal of Science Vol 32 No 213 July 1866.

He was a man of remarkable knowledge and ability, and he communicated papers on widely different subjects to various learned societies and scientific journals in London and Dublin. He wrote on the laws of equilibrium and motion of solid and fluid bodies (1846), on sun-heat, terrestrial radiation, geological climates and on tides. He wrote also on the granites of Leinster and Donegal and on the cleavage and joint-planes in the Old Red Sandstone of Waterford (1857-1858). He was president of the Royal Irish Academy from 1886 to 1891, and for twenty years he was secretary of the Royal Zoological Society of Ireland.

Publications

*"Manual of Geology" (1865)
*"Principles of Animal Mechanics" (1873)
*"Six Lectures on Physical Geography" (1880)In conjunction with his friend, Professor J Galbraith, he issued a series of "Manuals of Mathematical and Physical Science".

References

*1911