William Kingdon Clifford

William Kingdon Clifford (1845 to 1879) was a British mathematician and philosopher. Born in Exeter, he studied at King's College London and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was elected fellow in 1868, and in 1871 became professor of mathematics and mechanics at University College London. Building on the work of Hermann Grassmann he introduced what is now called geometric algebra, a special case of the Clifford algebra named in his honour, and he was the first to suggest that gravitation might be a manifestation of an underlying geometry. In his philosophical writings he coined the expression mind-stuff. He was a member of the Metaphysical Society, suffered a breakdown from overwork in 1876, and died of tuberculosis on Madeira in 1879.