"He Was Incapable of Making His Age Comprehend Him."

[beamjockey]

William Higgins appears to have been a man of peculiar habits, possessing very great abilities, and singularly comprehensive views upon science, but totally deficient in energy, and in the ambition of working out to the end any happy idea in science which might strike him, and in that peculiar tact of putting his opinions forward in such a manner as to call immediate attention to them, without which the most important discoveries may remain for many years neglected and barren. He was incapable of making his age comprehend him. His style of lecturing was very quaint, and a number of laughable anecdotes are still remembered of circumstances the result of this quaintness, but which our space, and our respect for his memory, forbid us dwelling upon.

Memoir of Bryan Higgins, M.D., and of William Higgins, Professor of Chemistry to the Royal Dublin Society, with a Short Notice of Irish Chemists and the State of Chemistry in Ireland before the Year 1800, by William K. Sullivan, First Chemical Assistant to the Museum of Irish Industry, and Chemist to the Royal Agricultural Society, in Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science, 1849, vol. 8, p. 465-495. This passage may be found on page 488.

Comments

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

It was a gentler, more civilized age, before the run-on sentence had been hunted to near extinction.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

*guffaw*

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

LOLfsnork

[brotherguy.livejournal.com]

Many of those traits are not traits you share - thank heavens!

Besides similarity of names and interests do you know if there is any other connection between the two of you?

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Not that I have been able to ascertain-- but it might be possible with more work.

Wheeler and Partington, in The Life and Work of William Higgins, Chemist, 1763-1825, provide a family tree for him. This might offer numerous hooks for genealogical research to determine how we might be related. Casual inspections using a relative's Ancestry.com account have not turned up anything, but you never know.

One historian, Mark I. Grossman, argues that the Higgins lost (half of) his job because of the 1810 Mooresfort (sometimes known as Tipperary) meteorite. See page 5 of this PDF and the following pages.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

If you were interested, I do contract genealogy on fairly reasonable rates. :->

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

This is good to keep in mind, but not something I'd have money for any time soon.

Over the holidays, a relative loaned me her Ancestry.com account, and I punched in most of the information in Wheeler & Partington's family tree. I figure if we let it brew for a while, other users will connect Higgins's people up with various families.