Abstract
The term " branching process " appears to have been coined by A. N.
Kolmogorov and N. A. Dmitriev 30 in 1947 to describe the stochastic
processes which arise when the theory of probability is introduced into
population mathematics, but the subject is much older than one might
suppose from this fact, and goes back nearly one hundred years.
The early history of the theory of branching processes centres round
the figure of the Reverend Henry William Watson, clergyman, mathe-
matician and alpinist. An account of his activities brings to life the kind
of world in which our Society was founded. Watson was born in 1827
and entered Trinity College, Cambridge (by way of King's College, London)
in 1846. In 1850 he was second Wrangler (second to Besant; the third
and fourth were Wostenholme and Hayward). Watson was very active
as a founder of societies; in particular he helped to found the Alpine Club
in 1857. One would like to be able to claim that he was a founder-member
of our own Society, but the evidence for this is exceedingly frail, and he
may in fact never have been a member at any time.f The three other
mathematicians just mentioned certainly did join the Society, and if
Watson did not do so then this was one of the few steps in life which
Hayward and he failed to take in common, for both became fellows of their
Cambridge colleges (Hayward was at St. John's), both were early members
of the Alpine Club, both were assistant masters at Harrow School, and
both became Fellows of the Royal Society. They married the sisters
Emily and Marianne Rowe. They died, in 1903, still closely associated,
within three weeks of each other.
I have been unable to establish a definite link between Watson and
the founding of the Society. However, Mr. T. S. Blakeney of the Alpine
Club tells me that there might be a link between Watson and another
notable event of 1865, the first ascent of the Matterhorn. In 1855 Watson
was a member of one of two parties who together made the second ascent
of the Dufourspitze, the highest point of Monte Rosa. It is just possible
that a guide in the other party may have been the elder one of the two
Taugwalders who were with Whymper on that tragic occasion ten years
later, and who alone with him survived it.
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