Pell, Morris Birkbeck

Born: 31 March 1827, Albion, Illinois, USA

Died: 7 May 1879, Glebe (result of progressive paralysis); buried in the Balmain cemetery

Family: Father, Gilbert Titus Pell (member of the Convention Legislature of Illinois); Mother, Elizabeth Birkbeck; Morriss paternal grandfather, Morris Birkbeck, was an English social reformer who founded the prairie settlement of Albion; Morriss parents separated and he went with his mother to Poughkeepsie, New York, and later, in 1841, to Plymouth, England

Married: 17 February 1852 Jane Juliana (Julia) Rusden (daughter of James Rusden, naval officer of Plymouth) (5 sons, 3 daughters)

Education:
New Grammar School, Plymouth, England
St Johns College, Cambridge (entered as a sizar)
BA 1849; senior wrangler in mathematics and second Smiths prizeman

Career:
18 March 1850 elected Fellow of St Johns College, Cambridge
1852 chosen as Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, University of Sydney (825 p.a. plus students fees)
July 1852 arrived Sydney (with his wife, mother, and two sisters)
Developed courses in mathematics at pass and honours levels (first BA degree required all branches of mathematics: logarithms, algebra to quadratic equations and the first four books of Euclid); Pells courses were more diversified and advanced in line with those studied at Cambridge, London, and Edinburgh (calculus of variations, probability, finite differences, differential geometry, optics and astronomy)
Pell specialized in problems on mortality rates and life expectation
1854 advocated the opening of a secular grammar school; actuarial consultant to the AMP Society
1855 Chairman of a commission to inquire into the Surveyor-Generals department
From 1856 Member, Philosophical Society (council 1858)
1858 Chairman of an inquiry into a fatal railway accident
1859 testified to the Legislative Assembly select committees on Sydney Grammar School, the University of Sydney, the composition of the Senate, the adverse effect of clergy on enrolments, new buildings, value of liberal studies in the education of businessmen and squatters, the beneficial effect of the university on secondary education (his evidence resulted in ex officio membership of senate for professors)
1861 1877 fellow of senate
2 December 1863 admitted to Bar
From 1867 Member and Secretary, Royal Society of New South Wales (council from 1869)
1868 Chairman, commission on methods of testing marine steam-boilers
1869 to 1870 Chairman, the Hunter River Floods Commission
1870 Chairman of board inquiring into the land titles branch of the Registrar-Generals department; Director and Consulting Actuary, Mutual Life Association of Australia
From 1872 examiner in Law, University of Sydney
1875 to 1877 Chairman, Sydney City and Suburban Sewage and Health Board
mid-1877 resigned from Chair of Mathematics
1878 re-elected to senate by the members of convocation
Connected with mining, brick-making, glass-making, and manufacturing fertilizers by crushing bones
Left and estate of 4000; annuity of 80 to his estranged wife, Julia, then residing in Tasmania, provided she did not return to Sydney (apparently, she had become an alcoholic)

Publications:
Geometrical Illustrations of the Differential Calculus, ?
"On the Rates of Mortality and Expectation of Life in New South Wales" Transactions of the Royal Society of New South Wales, 1867
"On the Distribution of Profits in Mutual Insurance Societies", Journal of the Institute of Actuaries, London, 1869
"On the Constitution of Matter", Transactions of the Royal Society of New South Wales, 1871
"On the Institute of Actuaries", Journal of the Institute of Actuaries, London, 1879