Robert Harley

Robert Harley (23 January 1828 – 26 July 1910) was an English Congregational minister and mathematician.

Life Born in Liverpool on 23 January 1828, he was third son of Robert Harley by his wife Mary, daughter of William Stevenson, and niece of General Stevenson of Ayr.. The father, after a career as a merchant, became a minister of the Wesleyan Methodist Association. Harley's mathematical aptitude developed at school in Blackburn under William Hoole, and age 16 he was appointed to a mathematical mastership at Seacombe, near Liverpool, returning later to teach at Blackburn.

He was elected to corresponding membership of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society on 30 April 1850.

In 1854 Harley entered the Congregational ministry, and was at Brighouse, Yorkshire, until 1868, after a time also filling the chair of mathematics and logic at Airedale College from 1864 to 1868. In 1863 he was admitted Fellow of the Royal Society. He acted as secretary of the A section of the British Association at meetings at Norwich (1868) and Edinburgh (1871); and was a vice-president of the meetings at Bradford (1873), Bath (1888), and Cardiff (1891). and an exposition of Cockle's method of symmetric products in Phil. Trans. (1860) attracted the attention of Arthur Cayley, who carried the research further.