He was, to start with, a born mathematician; everything in this line seemed to come as easily to him as the alphabet, and abstruse problems which in other men would cause corrugated brows and the burning of the midnight oil were to him merely pleasant employment. He was also a good organiser, a man of details, and at the same time of pleasing and strong personality. Sir Henry Keppel--one of the last survivors of old College times--gives his impression of Inman as "a tall man in black, with an austere countenance: but there was that in him that I liked." In the "Life and Letters of Sir Bartholomew J. Sulivan" the following passage occurs:-- "I was content so long as I kept with the senior boys of my batch; and it was a fortunate thing for me that, three months after I entered, Dr. Inman's son, Richard Inman, joined us. He had learnt the first three months' work, or more, before he entered, and I had nearly completed in three months what we were allowed six for. Inman passed in the studies that made him equal with me within a week of entering, and then we went on competing each month. Nothing could be fairer than Dr. Inman was to me throughout this rivalry. He urged me to take my books home at Christmas and Midsummer and work every day, adding, 'I shall keep Richard at work.'" This shows the Professor in a very pleasing light, with his love of his work, and his honest desire to see "the best man win"; any lad who took kindly to mathematics would be sure of his friendship and assistance. Inman was a Yorkshireman by birth, being the younger son of Richard Inman, of Garsdale Foot, Sedbergh; he was born in 1776, and was educated at Sedbergh Grammar School, to which institution he certainly did ample credit, for he carried all before him at Cambridge, coming out in 1800 as Senior Wrangler and first Smith's Prizeman. After this he appears to have had some idea of doing mission work in Syria; but being detained at Malta on account of the war, he occupied his time there in the study of Arabic. In 1803, young as he was--only twenty-seven--he was recommended by the Board of Longitude as astronomer on board the _Investigator_, engaged in Antarctic exploration, and joined her in June at Port Jackson. [Illustration: BILLIARD-ROOM, NAVAL COLLEGE (FORMERLY THE LARGE STUDY). _Photo: Cassell & Co., Ltd._] Eventually he returned to England by way of China, and towards the end of 1807 he was appointed Professor at the Royal Naval College, a post which he held for nearly thirty years. He was ordained about 1805, but does not appear to have held any benefice. During the whole period of the existence of the College under the amended regulations the official records and correspondence bear constant testimony to Inman's unflagging zeal and energy; he was always inaugurating something new, and it usually involved an accession of work for himself, but this he never appeared for a moment to consider.