Editing Professor Moriarty (section)

==Real-world role models==
[[File:Simon Newcomb 01.jpg|thumb|upright=.8|left|[[Simon Newcomb]] (circa 1905), one possible model for Moriarty]]

"[[Moriarty (name)|Moriarty]]" is an ancient [[Irish name]]<ref>{{cite book|author=Daniel Jones|title=Everyman's English Pronouncing Dictionary|author2=A.C. Gimson|publisher=J.M. Dent & Sons|year=1977|edition=14|location=London, UK}}</ref> as is [[Moran (surname)|Moran]], the surname of Moriarty's henchman, [[Sebastian Moran]].<ref>[http://genforum.genealogy.com/moran/messages/1264.html Moran genealogy site]; accessed 28 June 2014.</ref><ref>[http://www.irishgathering.ie/clan_info.asp?clanID=843 Moran profile], irishgathering.ie; accessed 28 June 2014.</ref> Doyle himself was of Irish Catholic descent, educated at [[Stonyhurst College]], although he abandoned his family's religious tradition, neither marrying nor raising his children in the Catholic faith, nor cleaving to any politics that his ethnic background might presuppose. Doyle is known to have used his experiences at Stonyhurst as inspiration for details of the Holmes series; among his contemporaries at the school were two boys surnamed Moriarty.<ref name="kirjasto">{{cite web|last=Liukkonen|first=Petri|title=Arthur Conan Doyle|url=http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/acdoyle.htm|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080111000324/http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/acdoyle.htm|archive-date=11 January 2008|website=Books and Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi)|publisher=[[Kuusankoski]] Public Library|location=Finland}}</ref>

ln addition to the master criminal [[Adam Worth]], there has been speculation among [[astronomer]]s and Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts that Doyle based his fictional character Moriarty on the Canadian-American astronomer [[Simon Newcomb]].<ref>Schaefer, B. E., 1993, [http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1993JBAA..103...30S Sherlock Holmes and some astronomical connections], ''Journal of the British Astronomical Association'', vol 103, no. 1, pp. 30–34. For a summary of this point, see this [https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13718576.700.html ''New Scientist'' article], also from 1993.</ref> Newcomb was revered as a multitalented genius, with a special mastery of mathematics, and he had become internationally famous in the years before Doyle began writing his stories. More to the point, Newcomb had earned a reputation for spite and malice, apparently seeking to destroy the careers and reputations of rival scientists.<ref>For example, see Newcomb's animosity to the career and works of [[Charles Sanders Peirce#Johns Hopkins University|Charles Peirce]].</ref>

[[File:George Boole.jpg|thumb|upright=.9|[[George Boole]] (circa 1860), another possible model for Moriarty]]
Moriarty may have been inspired in part by two real-world mathematicians. If the characterisations of Moriarty's academic papers are reversed, they describe real mathematical events. [[Carl Friedrich Gauss]] wrote a famous paper on the dynamics of an asteroid<ref>{{cite book|author=Gauss, Carl Friedrich|title=Theoria motus corporum coelestium in sectionibus conicis solem ambientium|publisher=Friedrich Perthes and I.H. Besser |location=Hamburg, Germany|year=1809|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HjLOAAAAMAAJ&q=theoria%20motus&pg=PP1 }}, as described in Donald Teets, Karen Whitehead, 1999 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2690592 "The Discovery of Ceres: How Gauss Became Famous"], ''Mathematics Magazine'', vol 72, no  2 (April 1999), pp. 83–93</ref> in his early 20s, and was appointed to a chair partly on the strength of this result. [[Srinivasa Ramanujan]] wrote about generalisations of the binomial theorem,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://mathworld.wolfram.com/RamanujanPsiSum.html|title=Ramanujan Psi Sum|publisher=Mathworld.wolfram.com|access-date=30 January 2011}}</ref> and earned a reputation as a genius by writing articles that confounded the best extant mathematicians.<ref>{{cite book|title=The man who knew infinity: A life of the genius Ramanujan|author=Kanigel, R.|year=1991|publisher=Scribner|isbn=978-0-671-75061-9|page=[https://archive.org/details/manwhoknewinfini00kani_1/page/168 168]|title-link=The Man Who Knew Infinity (book)}}</ref> Gauss's story was well known in Doyle's time, and Ramanujan's story unfolded at Cambridge from early 1913 to mid 1914;<ref>See, for example, the book by Kanigel, ''[[The Man Who Knew Infinity (book)|The Man Who Knew Infinity]]''</ref> ''[[The Valley of Fear]]'', which contains the comment about maths so abstruse that no one could criticise it, was published in September 1914. Irish mathematician [[Des MacHale]] has suggested [[George Boole]] may have been a model for Moriarty.<ref>{{cite conference|title=George Boole and Sherlock Holmes|author=MacHale, Desmond|book-title=The Legacy of George Boole|location=Cork, Ireland|year=1995}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last=Lynch|first=Peter|title=Could Sherlock Holmes's true nemesis have been a mathematician?|url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/could-sherlock-holmes-s-true-nemesis-have-been-a-mathematician-1.3694917|newspaper=[[The Irish Times]]|date=15 November 2018|access-date=23 November 2018}}</ref>

Jane Stanford, in ''That Irishman'', suggests that Doyle borrowed some of the traits and background of the [[Fenian]] [[John O'Connor Power]] for his portrayal of Moriarty.<ref>{{cite book|last=Stanford|first=Jane|title=That Irishman: The Life and Times of John O'Connor Power|url=https://archive.org/details/thatirishmanlife0000stan|url-access=registration|year=2011|publisher=The History Press, Ireland|location=Dublin|isbn=978-1-84588-698-1|pages=[https://archive.org/details/thatirishmanlife0000stan/page/30 30], 124–27}}</ref> In ''Moriarty Unmasked: Conan Doyle and an Anglo-Irish Quarrel'', 2017, Stanford explores Doyle's relationship with the Irish literary and political community in London. She suggests that Moriarty, Ireland's Napoleon, represents the Fenian threat at the heart of the British Empire. O'Connor Power studied at St Jarlath's Diocesan College in Tuam, County Galway.<ref>Sherlock Holmes' Irish Nemesis, Library Corner, Tuam Herald, 28 February 2018.</ref> In his third and last year he was Professor of Humanities. As an ex-professor, the Fenian leader successfully made a bid for a Westminster seat in County Mayo.<ref>Moriarty Unmasked, p.28.</ref>

It is averred that surviving [[Society of Jesus|Jesuit]] priests at the [[preparatory school (United Kingdom)|preparatory school]] [[Stonyhurst Saint Mary's Hall|Hodder Place]], [[Stonyhurst]], instantly recognised the physical description of Moriarty as that of the Rev. Thomas Kay, SJ, Prefect of Discipline, under whose authority Doyle fell as a wayward pupil.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://batteredbox.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/sir-arthur-conan-doyle-by-knight.pdf |title=Letter from Stonyhurst archivist about Doyle's experience there.}}</ref> According to this hypothesis, Doyle as a private joke has Inspector MacDonald describe Moriarty: "He'd have made a grand meenister with his thin face and grey hair and his solemn-like way of talking."<ref>''The Valley of Fear'', The Oxford Sherlock Holmes, p. 181<!-- ISBN needed --></ref>

The model which Doyle himself cited (through Sherlock Holmes) in ''The Valley of Fear'' is the London arch-criminal of the 18th century, [[Jonathan Wild]]. He mentions this when seeking to compare Moriarty to a real-world character that Inspector Alec MacDonald might know, but it is in vain as MacDonald is not so well read as Holmes.