Morgan Crofton

Morgan William Crofton was an Irish mathematician, born in Dublin in 1826 and died in Brighton in 1915, who is best known for his work on geometric probability and integral geometry. He studied mathematics at Trinity College Dublin, was appointed Professor of Natural Philosophy at Queen's College, Galway in 1849, and later taught in England at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, where he was Professor of Mathematics from 1870 to 1884. At Woolwich he discussed Buffon's needle problem with James Joseph Sylvester, and in 1885 he wrote the long article on probability for the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He also published on the operator calculus and extended Maxwell's theory of frameworks. Crofton's formula in integral geometry is named in his honour.