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This is the biography of a mathematician of note, who has come to prominence as a father of modern Combinatorics. His work presaged many of the topics in what has become, since the 1960s, Discrete Mathematics. The technicalities of his work could be seen as advanced, but this biography is not about technicalities. I have striven to describe the life of this mathematician and the world he inhabited, accessible to those without a strong mathematical background. It should have meaning for the general reader. I have attempted to convey the life of Kirkman as a Victorian polymath, a man who in his time was known for controversial views.
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There is not a competitor for this biography but a companion would be my Arthur Cayley: Mathematician Laureate of the Victorian Age, Johns Hopkins University Press (2007). This biography takes its place alongside biographies of scientists and mathematicians, in which I have recently been involved. Particularly with (a) A prodigy of Universal Genius: Robert Leslie Ellis, 1817-1859 (Springer 2020), (b) The Cambridge Companion to John Herschel, (Cambridge University Press 2024), and an upcoming biography of William Whewell (1794-1866). Whereas I was an author for the mathematical chapters in these books, I am the sole author in this Kirkman biography.
