Sir Edward Thomas Ffrench Bromhead, 2nd Baronet Federal Reserve System FRSE was a British landowner and mathematician best remembered as patron of the mathematician and physicist George Green.
Background
Born the son of Gonville Bromhead, 1st Baronet Bromhead (grandfather of the British second in command of the same name at Rorke"s Drift) and Lady Jane Ffrench, Baroness Ffrench, in Lincolnshire, Bromhead was educated at the University of Glasgow and later at Caius College, Cambridge before taking up the study of law at the Inner Temple in London.
Career
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1817. Returning to Lincolnshire, he became High Steward of Lincoln. He became the 2nd Bromhead baronet, of Thurlby Hall in 1822.
While he was, by all accounts, a gifted mathematician in his own right (although ill-health prevented him from pursuing his studies further), his greatest contribution to the subject is at second hand: having subscribed to the first publication of self-taught mathematician and physicist George Green, he encouraged Green to continue his research and to write further papers (which Bromhead sent on to be published in the Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society and those of the Royal Society of Edinburgh).
Bromhead repeated his success by encouraging a young George Boole who was also from the East Midlands. Bromhead was President of the Lincoln Mechanics Institute and the curator of the facility was George Boole"s father.
Boole came to notice when he gave a lecture of the work of Isaac Newton on 5 February 1835. The young Boole"s development was federal by books that Bromhead supplied.