James Maurice Wilson

James Maurice Wilson (November 6, 1836, Castletown, Isle of Man - April 15, 1931, Cool, Petersfield, Hampshire, England) was a British priest in the Church of England, as well as a theologian, teacher and astronomer. Wilson and his twin brother Edward Pearce Wilson attended King William's College on the Isle of Man from August 1848 until mid-summer 1853 (his twin died in December 1856). Their father Edward, Vicar of Nocton in Lincolnshire, was previously a director there. According to his autobiography, Wilson spent a rather miserable time at King William's College. He later attended Sedberg School. Wilson went to St. John's College in Cambridge in 1855, where he was a senior debater in 1859. He received a master's degree in art in 1862 and was a research fellow from 1859 to 1868. Wilson was a major figure in the development and reform of Victorian public schools and contributed to the teaching of science, which until then had been neglected. He was a teacher of mathematics and science at the rugby school from 1859 to 1879 and director of Clifton College from 1879 to 1890. He made astronomical observations (especially binary stars) at the Temple Observatory in Rugby with his former student George Mitchell Seabrok. The Temple Observatory was named after Frederick Temple, the director of the rugby school, who later became the bishop of Exeter and the archbishop of Canterbury. Temple inspired Wilson to write the textbook Elementary Geometry, which was published in 1868. Until that time, Euclidean Elements remained the standard textbook used in British schools.