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John Venn
Times obituary
LOGICIAN AND HISTORIAN
We regret to announce that Dr. John Venn, Sc.D., F.R.S., F.S.A., Senior Fellow and President of Gonville and Caius College, died at Cambridge on Tuesday, aged 88. Dr. Venn had long been one of the most conspicuous and most generally esteemed figures in the University. He was a kindly, friendly man, never ruffled, and he retained his bodily and mental activity to the last.
Dr. Venn was the author of several books on logic which had a considerable influence in their time, especially at Cambridge. He regarded it as the function of the logician to deal with material things, and his interest throughout was not an interest in mere method, nor an interest in things alone, but in method as applied to things. In 1888, Dr. Venn presented his collection of books on logic, certainly at that time the finest of its kind in the country, to the University Library, where it is kept in a separate class and has been catalogued.
In later years, he had devoted himself more and more to the work of historian, first of his college, and then of the University, in the monumental work, "Alumni Cantabrigienses," which he compiled in collaboration with his only son, Mr. J. A. Venn, of Trinity. This is nothing less than a "Biographical List of all known Students, Graduates, and Holders of Office at the University of Cambridge, from the Earliest Times to 1900." It was suggested by Foster's "Alumni Oxonienses," published some forty years ago, but is a great improvement on the original. The Venns, father and son, spared no industry in building up these records, which are of extraordinary value to historians and genealogists. The first and second volumes of Part I, from the earliest times to 1751; "Abbas" to "Juxton," were published during last year, and three more volumes will, it is hoped, complete the first part, containing 76,000 names. The materials exist in manuscript for Part II, which covers from 1752 to 1900 and contains a further 60,000 names.
In "The Annals of a Clerical Family," Venn traced his ancestry back to the very beginning of the seventeenth century, but we must content ourselves with recording that he was the son of Henry Venn, a Fellow of Queens', rector of Clapham, and perhaps best known as secretary of the Church Missionary Society from 1841 until his death in 1873. Henry Venn became a leading light among the Clapham Society and was for many years the recognized leader of the Evangelical body in the Church of England.
John Venn was born at Hull in 1834. His mother died on August 4, when he was a boy, and he was largely brought up at home, being partly educated at Highgate School and Islington Preparatory School. He went up to Caius College, where he was a scholar in 1853 and in 1857 was classed as sixth Wrangler in the Mathematical Tripos. He was elected to a junior fellowship in the year of his tripos and became a senior fellow eleven years later, being at the time of his death the senior of the senior fellows under the statutes of 1860. In 1903 he was elected president of the college. He was ordained deacon, proceeded to priest's orders, and was for a time curate at Cheshunt and at Mortlake. In 1869 he was Hulsean Lecturer, but in 1883 he availed himself of the then recent Act and resigned his clerical status.
At the time Venn took his degree, the school still stood in Free School Lane, and it was the duty of two of the junior fellows of Caius to be assistant principals there; he was wont to recall more than one instance of insubordination among the young men who were being educated in what is now part of the Engineering Laboratory. On his return to Cambridge, he took a leading part in his developmental Sciences Tripos, in which he served more than once as examiner.
Venn's first essay in the field of historical biography was a memoir of John Calus, the third founder of the college, and he became, in the fullest sense of the word, the college historian. He wrote its history for Robinson's series and compiled a biographical history of the college from 1349 to 1897, both model works of their kind. The annals of his own family, which appeared in 1904, have been family already mentioned.
For many years, Venn lectured on logic and moral philosophy In 1860 he published his work on "The Logic of Chance," which reached a second edition in 1878 and a third in 1888. Both the later editions were very considerably extended and revised, but no revival essentially altered his fundamental view that the theory of probability, to use his own words, "contains something more important than the results of a system of mathematical assumptions," and "takes cognition of the laws of things and not of the laws of our own minds in thinking about things." The work undoubtedly had a considerable influence on the outlook of English writers on the theory of statistics during the half-century that followed, but Venn, though a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society from 1800 to 1800, made only one contribution to its proceedings, a paper on "The Nature and Use of Averages," read in 1891. A volume on "Symbolic Logic" was issued in 1881 (second edition, 1894), and was followed by another on "The Principles of Empirical or Inductive Logic" in 1889 (second edition, 1907), a volume dominated by the same fundamental view as "The Logic of Chance": it is the function of the logician to deal with material things, "to reduce to order, to interpret, and to forecast the complex of external objects which we call the phenomenal world." It was characteristic of him to take much interest in the anthropometric investigation which was carried out in the university museums towards the end of the last century.
Dr. Venn married in 1887 Susanna Carnegie, daughter of the Rev. C. W. Edmonstone and niece of Sir Charles Edmonstone, second baronet of Duntreath.
LOGICIAN AND HISTORIAN
We regret to announce that Dr. John Venn, Sc.D., F.R.S., F.S.A., Senior Fellow and President of Gonville and Caius College, died at Cambridge on Tuesday, aged 88. Dr. Venn had long been one of the most conspicuous and most generally esteemed figures in the University. He was a kindly, friendly man, never ruffled, and he retained his bodily and mental activity to the last.
Dr. Venn was the author of several books on logic which had a considerable influence in their time, especially at Cambridge. He regarded it as the function of the logician to deal with material things, and his interest throughout was not an interest in mere method, nor an interest in things alone, but in method as applied to things. In 1888, Dr. Venn presented his collection of books on logic, certainly at that time the finest of its kind in the country, to the University Library, where it is kept in a separate class and has been catalogued.
In later years, he had devoted himself more and more to the work of historian, first of his college, and then of the University, in the monumental work, "Alumni Cantabrigienses," which he compiled in collaboration with his only son, Mr. J. A. Venn, of Trinity. This is nothing less than a "Biographical List of all known Students, Graduates, and Holders of Office at the University of Cambridge, from the Earliest Times to 1900." It was suggested by Foster's "Alumni Oxonienses," published some forty years ago, but is a great improvement on the original. The Venns, father and son, spared no industry in building up these records, which are of extraordinary value to historians and genealogists. The first and second volumes of Part I, from the earliest times to 1751; "Abbas" to "Juxton," were published during last year, and three more volumes will, it is hoped, complete the first part, containing 76,000 names. The materials exist in manuscript for Part II, which covers from 1752 to 1900 and contains a further 60,000 names.
In "The Annals of a Clerical Family," Venn traced his ancestry back to the very beginning of the seventeenth century, but we must content ourselves with recording that he was the son of Henry Venn, a Fellow of Queens', rector of Clapham, and perhaps best known as secretary of the Church Missionary Society from 1841 until his death in 1873. Henry Venn became a leading light among the Clapham Society and was for many years the recognized leader of the Evangelical body in the Church of England.
John Venn was born at Hull in 1834. His mother died on August 4, when he was a boy, and he was largely brought up at home, being partly educated at Highgate School and Islington Preparatory School. He went up to Caius College, where he was a scholar in 1853 and in 1857 was classed as sixth Wrangler in the Mathematical Tripos. He was elected to a junior fellowship in the year of his tripos and became a senior fellow eleven years later, being at the time of his death the senior of the senior fellows under the statutes of 1860. In 1903 he was elected president of the college. He was ordained deacon, proceeded to priest's orders, and was for a time curate at Cheshunt and at Mortlake. In 1869 he was Hulsean Lecturer, but in 1883 he availed himself of the then recent Act and resigned his clerical status.
At the time Venn took his degree, the school still stood in Free School Lane, and it was the duty of two of the junior fellows of Caius to be assistant principals there; he was wont to recall more than one instance of insubordination among the young men who were being educated in what is now part of the Engineering Laboratory. On his return to Cambridge, he took a leading part in his developmental Sciences Tripos, in which he served more than once as examiner.
Venn's first essay in the field of historical biography was a memoir of John Calus, the third founder of the college, and he became, in the fullest sense of the word, the college historian. He wrote its history for Robinson's series and compiled a biographical history of the college from 1349 to 1897, both model works of their kind. The annals of his own family, which appeared in 1904, have been family already mentioned.
For many years, Venn lectured on logic and moral philosophy In 1860 he published his work on "The Logic of Chance," which reached a second edition in 1878 and a third in 1888. Both the later editions were very considerably extended and revised, but no revival essentially altered his fundamental view that the theory of probability, to use his own words, "contains something more important than the results of a system of mathematical assumptions," and "takes cognition of the laws of things and not of the laws of our own minds in thinking about things." The work undoubtedly had a considerable influence on the outlook of English writers on the theory of statistics during the half-century that followed, but Venn, though a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society from 1800 to 1800, made only one contribution to its proceedings, a paper on "The Nature and Use of Averages," read in 1891. A volume on "Symbolic Logic" was issued in 1881 (second edition, 1894), and was followed by another on "The Principles of Empirical or Inductive Logic" in 1889 (second edition, 1907), a volume dominated by the same fundamental view as "The Logic of Chance": it is the function of the logician to deal with material things, "to reduce to order, to interpret, and to forecast the complex of external objects which we call the phenomenal world." It was characteristic of him to take much interest in the anthropometric investigation which was carried out in the university museums towards the end of the last century.
Dr. Venn married in 1887 Susanna Carnegie, daughter of the Rev. C. W. Edmonstone and niece of Sir Charles Edmonstone, second baronet of Duntreath.
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