Not that the propositions of geometry are only approximately true, but that they remain absolutely true in regard to that Euclidean space which has been so long regarded as being the physical space of our experience.

degree and win a Fellowship by competitive examination. Formerly when mathematicians spoke of "groups" they had meant permutation groups. While editing these volumes he was suffering from a painful internal malady to which he succumbed on 26 January 1895 in the 74th year of his age.

He postulated the Cayley–Hamilton theorem—that every square matrix is a root of its own characteristic polynomial and verified it for matrices of order 2 and 3. He was the first to define the concept of a group in the modern way—as a set with a binary operation satisfying certain laws.