 He thus came up to Trinity in 1812 as a “sub-sizar” (scholarship student). In 1814 he won the Chancellor’s prize for his epic poem “Boadicea,” in this way following in the footsteps of his mother, Elizabeth Whewell, who had published poems in the local papers. Yet he did not neglect the mathematical side of his training; in 1816 he proved his mathematical prowess by placing as both second Wrangler and second Smith’s Prize man. The following year he won a college fellowship. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1820, and ordained a priest (as required for Trinity Fellows) in 1825. He took up the Chair in Mineralogy in 1828, and resigned it in 1832. In 1838 Whewell became Professor of Moral Philosophy. Almost immediately after his marriage to Cordelia Marshall on 12 October 1841, he was named Master of Trinity College upon the recommendation of the Prime Minister Robert Peel. He was Vice-Chancellor of the University in 1842 and again in 1855. In 1848 he played a large role in establishing the Natural and Moral Sciences Triposes at the University. His first wife died in 1855, and he later married Lady Evalina Affleck, the widowed sister of his friend Robert Ellis. Lady Affleck died in 1865. Whewell had no children. He died, after being thrown from his horse, on 6 March 1866. (More details about Whewell’s life and times can be found in Snyder 2011.)