They were the first Honorary Fellows elected by the
College. The announcement was made in a letter from the Master of
Trinity (W.H. Thompson), and Airy's reply was as follows:
ROYAL OBSERVATORY, GREENWICH,
LONDON, S.E.
_1867, June 12th_.
MY DEAR MASTER,
I am very much gratified by your kind note received this morning,
conveying to me the notice that the Master and Sixteen Senior Fellows
had elected me, under their new powers, as Honorary Fellow of the
College.
It has always been my wish to maintain a friendly connection with my
College, and I am delighted to receive this response from the
College. The peculiar form in which the reference to the Statute
enables them to put it renders it doubly pleasing.
As the Statute is new, I should be obliged by a copy of it. And, at
any convenient time, I should be glad to know the name of the person
with whom I am so honorably associated.
I am, My dear Master,
Very faithfully yours,
G.B. AIRY.
* * * * *
Consequent on Airy's proposals in 1866 for the introduction of new
physical subjects into the Senate-House Examination and his desire
that the large number of questions set in Pure Mathematics, or as he
termed it "Useless Algebra," should be curtailed, there was a smart
and interesting correspondence between him and Prof.
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