Coutts Trotter

Coutts Trotter (1 August 1837 – 4 December 1887) was a British physicist and academic administrator, vice-master of Trinity College, Cambridge from 1885.

Life He was the son of the stockbroker Alexander Trotter and his first wife Jacqueline Otter, daughter of William Otter, born on 1 August 1837 in Hampstead; the electrical engineer Alexander Pelham Trotter was his half-brother, and Henry Dundas Trotter his uncle. He was educated at Harrow School, and matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1855, graduating B.A. in 1859, and M.A. in 1862. The drive for reform began in Trinity College itself, after William Whewell died in 1866, where Trotter had allies in Henry Sidgwick and Henry Jackson.

In Trinity, Trotter became junior dean in 1870, and senior dean in 1874. He was tutor of his college from 1872 to 1882, and was appointed its vice-master in 1885. He died unmarried in Trinity College on 4 December 1887: at the time he was president of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, and vice-president of the council of Newnham College. He left much of his library, with a bequest in money, to Trinity College, and the remainder of his library and his collection of scientific instruments to Newnham College. It was held, for example, by Ernest Rutherford.