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for printing| James Jeans' father was William Tullock Jeans.
William Jeans was a parliamentary journalist of Scottish descent
who wrote two books on the lives of scientists. The name Hopgood
was James mother's maiden name; she came from the north of
England. It was a very religious Christian family with James the
eldest of the three children and the only boy. James' family
moved to Brighton when he was eighteen months old then, when he
was three years old, they moved to London. Jeans was educated in
Merchant Taylor's School in London which he entered in 1890. The
first topic which interested him was classics but soon his
interests turned towards mathematics. An excellent mathematics
teacher at the school encouraged Jeans' interest in the subject
but from the time he was a young child he had shown a
fascination with numbers. Several stories about his remarkable
abilities