John Kells Ingram (7 July 1823 – 1 May 1907) was an Irish mathematician, economist and poet. He has been co-credited, along with John William Stubbs, with introducing the geometric concept of inversion in a circle.
Biography
Early life Ingram was born on 7 July 1823, at the Rectory of Templecarne (Aghnahoo), just south of Pettigo, a village in south-east County Donegal, Ireland into an Ulster Scots family. Although his ancestry was Scottish Presbyterian, Ingram's grandparents had converted to Anglicanism. His grandfather Captain John Ingram ran a linen mill and had a business as a linen bleacher in Glennane (Lisdrumhure). He was active in the Volunteer Movement and financed in 1782 a volunteer corps in the County Armagh, known as Lisdrumhure Volunteers or Mountnorris Volunteers. Ingram's father, Rev. William Ingram, a scholar at Trinity College Dublin, rector of the Church of Ireland and curate of Templecarne Parish (Diocese of Clogher), married Elizabeth Cooke in 1817. Ingram's father died in 1829 and his mother then moved with the family to Newry, to guarantee the best possible education for her five children. Ingram first went to Mr. Lyons' School in Newry from 1829 to 1837. He also attended Drogheda Grammar School. In 1840, at the age of sixteen, Ingram published sonnets in the Dublin University Magazine.
Academic career On 13 October 1837, he matriculated at Trinity College Dublin. He was elected a Scholar of the college in 1840, graduated with a BA in mathematics in 1842, and was awarded an MA in 1850. He was a member of the College Historical Society. His early scholarly publications (1842–1847) were in mathematics. He had a distinguished career at Trinity, spanning over fifty-five years, as a student, fellow and professor, successively of Oratory, English Literature, Jurisprudence and Greek, LL.D, FTCD), subsequently becoming the College Librarian and ultimately its Vice Provost. During his life, Ingram was President of the Library Association of Great Britain, co-founder of the National Library of Ireland, National Library trustee, Vice-president of the Library Association of Ireland, a member of the Royal Irish Academy, co-founder of the Dublin Statistical Society, honorary member of the American Economic Association, member of the English historical school of economics and co-founder of the Hermathena publication.
The Memory of the Dead One evening in March 1843 Ingram wrote the poem for which he is best remembered, a political ballad called "The Memory of the Dead" (better known as "Who Fears to Speak of '98"; or "Ninety Eight"), in honour of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 led by the United Irishmen. On that evening, he was in company of his like-minded friends John O'Regan, Thomas O'Regan and George Ferdinand Shaw, all fellow Protestant students at TCD. They spent the evening discussing the 1798 Rebellion when briefly Catholics and Protestants (mainly Presbyterians and Methodists) united to try to overturn the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland from which all of them were excluded. They were stirred by the lack of regard shown for the Irish rebels of 1798 by the contemporary nationalist movement, led by Daniel O'Connell. The poem was published anonymously on 1 April 1843 in Thomas Davis's The Nation Newspaper although in fact its authorship was an open secret in Dublin. The Nation was the publication of the radical and bourgeois-radical wing of Ó Conaill's movement for "repeal" of the Act of Union between Ireland and Great Britain. Despite this poem, Ingram showed no nationalist sympathies at any time, maintaining that Ireland was not ready for self-government. "'The Memory of the Dead' was my only contribution to the 'Nation'," commented Ingram later. Nevertheless, before he died, Ingram made a manuscript copy of "Ninety Eight", proclaiming that he would always defend brave men who opposed tyranny. It was set to music for voice and piano in 1845 by John Edward Pigot. Ingram's ballad was translated into Latin by Robert Yelverton Tyrrell and into Irish by Dr. Douglas Hyde. The song became a popular Irish nationalist anthem. It is one of the best-known of Irish Republican songs and often played by the piper at Republican funerals.
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