James Patrick Muirhead

Gaining on 3 February 1832 a Snell exhibition at Balliol College, Oxford, he matriculated there on 6 April 1832; spending his long vacations in alpine expeditions, and in the study of German rather than in working for honours, he took a third class in lit.

[3] He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1841, his proposer being Sir John Robison.

[2] While at Oxford, he had become acquainted with his kinsman James Watt the younger, who decided not to write a memoir of his father, and gave the task to Muirhead.

[2] Muirhead in 1839 translated François Arago's Eloge Historique de James Watt for the Académie des Sciences, given in 1834.

The third volume, illustrated with engravings of machinery by Wilson Lowry, dealt with patent specifications; the second with extracts from correspondence.

Six children survived them, the eldest son being Lionel Boulton Campbell Lockhart Muirhead, who composed hymns,[5] and the third son Colonel Herbert Hugh Muirhead, R.E.,[2] who played for the Royal Engineers in the 1872 FA Cup Final.

[6] Their daughter Beatrix Marion (later Sturt) would write her father's biography, mentioning her brothers but not herself.