Dr. Alfred Young 1873 to 1940

Alfred Young was born 16th April 1873 in Widnes, Lancashire the first son of his father Edward's second marriage.  His father was a prosperous Liverpool merchant and a Justice of the Peace.  When Alfred was six the family moved to Bournemouth where he was educated by private tutor until attending Monkton Combe School near Bath.  It was here that his mathematical skills were recognised.  In 1892 he entered Clare Collage, Cambridge after winning a scholarship.  By his third year he had proved himself to be a good sportsman, especially in rowing, as well as mathematician.  But he did not apply himself to his exams, Mathematical Tripos, and was disappointly placed 10th Wrangler in 1895.  (Wrangler being a Cambridge term for First Class Mathematician.)  In 1899 he published his first paper, The irreducible concomitants of any number of binary quartics, in the Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society followed by his second, The invariant syzgies of lowest degree of any number of quartics, a year later.  1901 to 1905 he lectured in Selwyn Collage, Cambridge and then was elected to a Fellowship at Clare College where he became Bursar.  He married Edith Clara Wilson in 1907 and the following year was ordained becoming Curate at Christ Church, Hastings.  In 1910 he became Rector at Birdbrook and lived at The Old Rectory.  He was also an inventor, inventing 2 generators that were patented in 1918 and 1919 but were never used commercially.  In 1934 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.  The National Protrait Gallery have a photographic portrait of Dr. Young taken by Walter Stoneman in 1934 presumably to commemorate him becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.

This is a copy Alfred Youngs entry in the list of rectors taken from the Parish Records.

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