Alfred Cardew Dixon, 1865-1936

Cardew Dixon was born on 22 May , 1865, at Northallerton ,the eldest son of the Rev. G . T . Dixon, a Wesleyan minister. He is remembered as a day -boy , "pale, fragile, with flaxen hair and eyes of vivid blue,” in 1874—75, at the Quaker school in Kendal, where his powers of mental arithmetic amazed his schoolfellows. Becoming head of the school in a very short time, he was transferred to Kingswood School, near Bath , under T. G. Osborn , sometime Fellow of Trinity Hall, who was him self an accomplished mathematician . As a boy he was something of a prodigy ; the school examiner, finding that he obtained the maximum marks in papers set at the annual examination, one year deliberately set a problem that could not be done, only to receive from Dixonan elaborate proof of its impossibility. It was remarked that when he was working hardest and best he often seemed half asleep.