The endowment came from the will of the celebrated locomotive designer and founder of locomotive builder Beyer, Peacock & Company, Charles Frederick Beyer.
[3] After Schuster's departure, the chair of Mathematics to which Horace Lamb had been appointed in 1885 became the Beyer Professorship of Mathematics and remained so until Lamb's retirement in 1920.
[4] At this point an existing chair, of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy to which Sydney Chapman had been appointed in 1919, was renamed the Beyer Professorship of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy.
Most of the holders of the post were elected as Fellows of the Royal Society, an honour bestowed on a small minority of UK mathematics professors.
Lamb, Champman, Milne and Goldstein all received the Smith's Prize and indication of early career promise.