page_title: Alexander Ross Clarke
section_title: Family background and education 1828–1850
hierarchical_section_title: Alexander Ross Clarke / Biographical details / Family background and education 1828–1850
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of a portrait of Alexander Ross Clarke painted when he was about 22.
context_page_description: Col Alexander Ross Clarke FRS FRSE was a British geodesist, primarily remembered for his calculation of the Principal Triangulation of Britain, the calculation of the Figure of the Earth and one of the most important text books of Geodesy. He was an officer of the Royal Engineers employed on the Ordnance Survey.
context_section_description: Clarke was born in Reading, Berkshire, England on 16 December 1828. His Scottish father, David Ross Clarke, had travelled to Jamaica as a young merchant and there he married Elizabeth (Eliza) Ann Hall, the daughter of Colonel Charles William Hall and Isabella Ann Ford, on 8 March 1827 in Kingston. They came to England for the birth of Alexander but they must have returned to Jamaica very soon afterwards for Alexander would later regale his own children with stories of his childhood experiences in the colony.(Close1925)
  The parents, David and Eliza, were back in England by 1834 but they soon moved up to David's family home at Eriboll in the far north of Scotland. The school teaching there was primitive but effective.  Close (1943) repeats an anecdote told by Alexander's younger brother: "I do not know what schooling he had in those young days, but I remember his telling me of a dominie putting him under his desk and kicking him from time to time, also how taws were used. Anyway he learned Latin and mathematics."
  Close adds that "The mathematics that was thus kicked into him determined his career in after life."
  David Clarke and his family moved to London, before 1846, and eventually settled at 35 Devonshire Place, where he died in 1861. His wife, Eliza Ann, died in 1887. It was from this London address that Alexander Clarke, at the age of seventeen in 1846, applied to the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich as a Gentleman Cadet. Clarke was very unprepared for the entrance examination, having left a space of only three weeks for revision, and he was placed bottom of the list of candidates. At Woolwich he would undergo basic military training and formal teaching in subjects such as mathematics and engineering. Clarke excelled at his studies and he passed out first, with "the reputation of being an exceptionally capable young man" (Close 1943). He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Engineers on 1 October 1847.
  After his commissioning, Clarke attended the Young Officers Course at the Royal School of Military Engineering at Chatham and there he would have studied surveying as well as military engineering. He was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant on 11 July 1849 at the end of that course.
caption: Clarke at 22
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