Spottiswoode
WILLIAM, English mathematician; born in London, Jan. 11, 1825; was educated at Harrow and Balliol College, Oxford. For some time he lectured at Balliol, and in 1846 he succeeded his father as the head of the great printing house of Eyre & Spottiswoode. Though throughout life an energetic man of business, he found time for much original work as well as for travels in Eastern Russia, Croatia, and Hungary. His contributions to the "Proceedings" of the Royal Society and of the London Mathematical Society and his admirable lectures on the "Polarization of Light" (1874), are known to all students. Spottiswoode was treasurer of the British Association (1861- 1874), of the Royal Institution (1865- 1873), and of the Royal Society (1871- 1878); president of Section A (1865) and of the British Association itself (1878), of the London Mathematical Society (1870-1872), and of the Royal Society from 1879 till his death in London, June 27, 1883.
SPOTTSYLVANIA COURT-HOUSE, a small village in Virginia, 55 miles N. by W. of Richmond, the scene of one of the most desperate battles of the American Civil War. On May 10, 1864, during the Wilderness campaign, Grant attacked Lee in his earthworks, and was repulsed with dreadful slaughter; yet on the next day he wrote to the Secretary of War, "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer," and on the 12th repeated the assault, when Hancock's corps carried and held the "bloody angle." The next morning Lee, unable to bear his share of the heavy losses, withdrew within an inner line of intrenchments, and on the 20th Grant, having failed to dislodge him, moved round his flank toward Richmond.