Background
He was the son of John Hopkinson, a mechanical engineer, and among his brothers were John Hopkinson, a physicist and electrical engineer, and Edward Hopkinson, an electrical engineer and Member of Parliament.
He was the son of John Hopkinson, a mechanical engineer, and among his brothers were John Hopkinson, a physicist and electrical engineer, and Edward Hopkinson, an electrical engineer and Member of Parliament.
He first stood for election to the House of Commons at the 1885 general election, when he was the unsuccessful Liberal Party candidate in Manchester East. He was unsuccessful again as a Liberal Unionist candidate at the 1892 general election, when he stood in Manchester South-West. He resigned from Parliament in February 1898, by the procedural device of accepting appointment as Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds.
Hopkinson was Vice-Chancellor of the Victoria University from 1901 to 15 July 1903 and then of the Victoria University of Manchester until 1913.
In December 1914 he was appointed to the Committee on Alleged German Outrages, which in May 1915 reported on German war crimes against civilians during the invasion of Belgium in the opening months of World War I.
He received the honorary Doctor of Laws (Doctor of Laws) from the University of Glasgow in June 1901. He did not contest the 1929 general election.
A sculpture of him by John Cassidy was exhibited at Manchester in 1912.
26th United Kingdom Parliament. 34th United Kingdom Parliament.
