Round and Round in Hull

I have been thinking a lot about stories about people, places and events, current and in history to celebrate Hull as UK City of Culture during 2017. One famous individual  of whom I have been reminded is the great mathematician and philosopher John Venn.

He was born on 4th August 1834. His father was the rector of parish of Drypool in the east of the city.

As was the normal order of things in Victorian England, John was compelled to follow the family tradition and became a priest in 1859.

He had an inquisitive and bright mind first showing a talent for inventing when he came up with a machine to mechanically bowl cricket balls. This machine turned out to be so good and accurate that it managed to bowl out one of the top ranked players in the Australian Touring team four times consecutively.

However his thirst for knowledge and passion for mathematics encouraged him to do more than just toy with cricket gadgets and in his speciality of "Logics" he published  three textbooks entitled ‘The Logic of Chance’ which was published in 1866, ‘Symbolic Logic’ (1881) and The Principles of Empirical Logic (1889). The books dealt with frequency interpretation or what we know better today as  the theory of probability.

His 1881  book introduced the concept of the Venn diagram.

Anyone who has studied maths from elementary to GCSE level in school will be very familiar with the Venn diagram in either a good or a bad way.

They are a representation of the relation between sets of things using circles within circles.  The sections which are overlapping represent similar properties of the subsets and the independent areas the individual properties of the sets.

As a change from just the written word I thought about putting  together a Venn diagram on the theme of Sons of Hull.

In the first set of "people who are very good at maths" is Venn himself.

I did not really have to look very far for another famous individual under the set of "people who are good at writing hymns" in John Bacchus Dykes.

There are some coincidental facts about the two men. Yes, they both have the same Christian name but more than that they were born only 11 years apart in the same part of the east of Hull and shared the same calling to the clergy. Conceivably they may even have met in their younger days  although I have not seen any evidence to support this.

John Bacchus Dykes was born in Hull some 11 years earlier than Venn.

His father, William Hey Dykes was a ship builder and later a banker. By the age of 10, he was often to be found acting as  assistant organist at St John's Church in Myton, Hull, where his paternal grandfather was vicar and his uncle Thomas was organist. He was appointed to the curacy of Malton, North Yorkshire in 1847, Ordained Deacon at York Minster in January 1848 and in the following year he was appointed a minor canon of Durham.

He is best known for composing over 300 hymn tunes.

For a new venture in 1861 entitled "Hymns Ancient & Modern" he submitted what are now regarded as classics, DIES IRAE (set to the words Day of wrath O day of mourning); HOLLINGSIDE (Jesu, lover of my soul); HORBURY (Nearer, my God, to Thee); MELITA, (Eternal Father, strong to save, used at the funerals of J F Kennedy and Sir Winston Churchill); NICAEA (Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty) ST. CROSS (O come and mourn with me awhile); and ST. CUTHBERT (Our blest Redeemer, ere He breathed).

Other, later, tunes which achieved acclaim include GERONTIUS (Praise to the Holiest in the height) LUX BENIGNA (Lead, Kindly Light); STRENGTH AND STAY (O strength and stay, upholding all creation)and DOMINUS REGIT ME (The King of Love my shepherd is).

His many harmonisations include WIR PFLÜGEN (We plough the fields, and scatter), MILES LANE (All hail the power of Jesu’s name) and O QUANTA QUALIA (O, what their joy and their glory must be).

He also wrote two major anthems "These are they that came out of great tribulation" and "The Lord is my shepherd".

So, here is my diagram to celebrate these two great Sons of Hull