From the Colchester Grammar-School, when eighteen years of age, he went, in 1819, to Trinity College, Cambridge. Three years afterward he was elected to a scholarship. In 1823, on his graduating B. A., young Airy came out as Senior Wrangler. In 1824 he obtained his fellowship at Trinity. His degree of M. A. was taken in 1826, and he was simultaneously elected, though only then in his twenty-fifth year, as Lucasian Professor at Cambridge. Illustrious philosophers like Barrow and Newton had preceeded him... Latterly, however, the office had become, in a great measure, purely honorary, and might also be said to have degenerated into a sinecure.