Sir Edward Thomas ffrench Bromhead, 2nd Baronet FRS FRSE (26 March 1789 – 14 March 1855) was a British landowner and mathematician, best remembered as patron of the mathematician and physicist George Green and mentor of George Boole.
While at Cambridge, Bromhead was a founder of the Analytical Society, a precursor of the Cambridge Philosophical Society,[3] together with John Herschel, George Peacock and Charles Babbage, with whom he maintained a close and lifelong friendship.
While he was, by all accounts, a gifted mathematician in his own right (although ill-health prevented him from pursuing his studies further), his greatest contribution to the subject is at second hand: having subscribed to the first publication of self-taught mathematician and physicist George Green, he encouraged Green to continue his research and to write further papers (which Bromhead sent on to be published in the Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society and those of the Royal Society of Edinburgh).
Bromhead repeated his success by encouraging the young George Boole from Lincoln.
Boole first came to public notice when he gave a lecture on the work of Sir Isaac Newton on 5 February 1835.