BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics最新文献

{"title":"Charles Hutton: ‘One of the greatest mathematicians in Europe’?","authors":"B. Wardhaugh","doi":"10.1080/17498430.2016.1236319","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17498430.2016.1236319","url":null,"abstract":"Charles Hutton, 1737–1823. If you are interested in eighteenth- or nineteenth-century British mathematics, you've heard of him; you've quite probably used his 1795 Dictionary as a historical source. You quite possibly don't know much else. I'm at present working on an AHRC-funded biography of Charles Hutton, together with an edition of his hundred-odd surviving letters. This article reflects on the nature and significance of Hutton's achievements, and what his example tells us about mathematical biography more generally.","PeriodicalId":211442,"journal":{"name":"BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124475463","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Mengoli's mathematical ideas in Leibniz's excerpts","authors":"M. Massa-Esteve","doi":"10.1080/17498430.2016.1239807","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17498430.2016.1239807","url":null,"abstract":"Dedicated to the memory of Jacqueline Stedall In the seventeenth century many changes occurred in the practice of mathematics. An essential change was the establishment of a symbolic language, so that the new language of symbols and techniques could be used to obtain new results. Pietro Mengoli (1626/7–86), a pupil of Cavalieri, considered the use of symbolic language and algebraic procedures essential for solving all kinds of problems. Following the algebraic research of Viète, Mengoli constructed a geometry of species, Geometriae Speciosae Elementa (1659), which allowed him to use algebra in geometry in complementary ways to solve quadrature problems, and later to compute the quadrature of the circle in his Circolo (1672). In a letter to Oldenburg as early as 1673, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) expressed an interest in Mengoli's works, and again later in 1676, when he wrote some excerpts from Mengoli's Circolo. The aim of this paper is to show how in these excerpts Leibniz dealt with Mengoli's ideas as well as to provide new insights into Leibniz's mathematical interpretations and comments.","PeriodicalId":211442,"journal":{"name":"BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124345939","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A plurality of algebras, 1200–1600: Algebraic Europe from Fibonacci to Clavius1","authors":"K. Parshall","doi":"10.1080/17498430.2016.1225340","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17498430.2016.1225340","url":null,"abstract":"In memory of Jackie Stedall, friend and colleague As Jackie Stedall argued in her 2011 book, From Cardano's great art to Lagrange's reflections: filling a gap in the history of algebra, there was a ‘transition from the traditional algebra of equation-solving in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the emergence of “modern” or “abstract” algebra in the mid nineteenth century’ (page vii). This paper traces the evolution from the thirteenth-century work of the Pisan mathematician, Leonardo Fibonacci, to the early seventeenth-century work of the German Jesuit Christoph Clavius of what came to be considered ‘traditional algebra’. It contends that rather than a single ‘traditional algebra’, in fact, a plurality of intimately related yet subtly different algebras emerged over the course of those four centuries in different yet interacting national settings.","PeriodicalId":211442,"journal":{"name":"BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116317612","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The manuscripts of Thomas Harriot (1560–1621)","authors":"R. Goulding, Matthias Schemmel","doi":"10.1080/17498430.2017.1260792","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17498430.2017.1260792","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":211442,"journal":{"name":"BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128175190","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"‘To the publike advancement’ John Collins and the promotion of mathematical knowledge in Restoration England","authors":"P. Beeley","doi":"10.1080/17498430.2017.1278829","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17498430.2017.1278829","url":null,"abstract":"Dedicated to the memory of Jacqueline Stedall","PeriodicalId":211442,"journal":{"name":"BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133265893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A forgotten booklet by Goldbach now rediscovered and three versions of its contents","authors":"Staffan Rodhe","doi":"10.1080/17498430.2016.1225628","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17498430.2016.1225628","url":null,"abstract":"Dedicated to the memory of Jacqueline Stedall","PeriodicalId":211442,"journal":{"name":"BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131657816","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"... in the darkest night that is ... Briggs, Blundeville, Wright, and the misconception of finding latitude","authors":"T. Sonar","doi":"10.1080/17498430.2016.1225337","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17498430.2016.1225337","url":null,"abstract":"Dedicated to the memory of Jacqueline Stedall When William Gilbert published his monumental work De magnete in 1600 natural philosophy in early modern England was born. In his work Gilbert included a theory of magnetic inclination, called dip, and devised an instrument to find latitude from dip. Here we describe and analyse this theory which was turned into mathematics by Henry Briggs.","PeriodicalId":211442,"journal":{"name":"BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124382346","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"More seventeenth-century networks","authors":"N. Biggs","doi":"10.1080/17498430.2016.1225781","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17498430.2016.1225781","url":null,"abstract":"Dedicated to the memory of Jacqueline Stedall Jackie Stedall often wrote about the links that connected mathematicians and their work, especially in seventeenth-century England. This article was inspired by her work on Thomas Harriot and his circle. It describes networks that involved two very different men, Thomas Aylesbury and John Reynolds. In passing, we shall catch a few glimpses of the background to mathematical activity in England during the period of the Civil War.","PeriodicalId":211442,"journal":{"name":"BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115244283","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"BSHM/Gresham College meeting: Women in Mathematics: A Celebration of the Bicentenary of Ada Lovelace Gresham College, London, 29 October 2015","authors":"R. Flood","doi":"10.1080/17498430.2016.1215857","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17498430.2016.1215857","url":null,"abstract":"I n 2015 the theme of the annual BSHM/Gresham College meeting was ‘Women in Mathematics: A Celebration of the Bicentenary of Ada Lovelace’. Since 2012 these lectures have been accompanied by two other invited talks on a related subject to form a series of half-day meetings. The first talk entitled Hypatia: Sifting the Myths was given by Dr Fenny Smith. Fenny introduced Hypatia as the first women mathematician of whom we have reasonably secure and detailed knowledge. Hypatia devoted her life to the teaching of mathematics and Neoplatonist philosophy in Alexandria, practising around the turn of the 4th to 5th centuries AD. The talk gave a fascinating account of current thinking on her life and mathematics and of the ancient and secondary source material. Much of what we know about her teaching and her pupils comes from the letters of her pupil Synesius of Cyrene, a city on the north coast of modern Libya. It is from Synesius also that we learn about some of her mathematics, finding that she wrote commentaries on the Arithmetic of Diophantus, the Astronomical Canon and the Conics of Apollonius. Dr Smith also discussed the nature of Hypatia’s involvement with her father Theon’s commentary on Book III of the Almagest, Ptolemy’s influential work on the motions of the stars and planets. The talk finished with a discussion of the complex political, religious and social factors involved in Hypatia’s brutal murder and mutilation in c. 415 AD. This talk was followed by a lecture by Dr Peter Neumann OBE, Emeritus Fellow of the Queen’s College, Oxford, on his mother Hanna Neumann and on her distinguished career as a mathematician in the twentieth century. The title wasHanna Neumann: A Mathematician in Difficult Times and Peter drew on archival research and personal memories in discussing his mother’s life and work. She was born in Berlin in 1914, christened Johanna von Caemmerer, and in the interwar period studied mathematics at Humboldt University, Berlin and then at G€ ottingen. In 1938 she moved to Britain and later that year married B H Neumann who also enjoyed a distinguished mathematical career. During the war Hanna studied for her DPhil thesis, On Free Products of Groups, and Peter gave a charming and I found inspirational account of the circumstances in which this work was undertaken. After the war she held posts at University College, Hull and Manchester College of Science and Technology before emigrating to the Institute for Advanced Study, ANU, Canberra in 1963 where her husband had moved the previous year. She died suddenly in Canada in November 1971 while on a lecture tour. The lecture finished with a brief account of her main mathematical work in group theory. The Gresham BSHM lecture was delivered by Ursula Martin, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Oxford, who spoke on The Scientific Life of Ada Lovelace. Ada Lovelace is famous for a paper published in 1843, which","PeriodicalId":211442,"journal":{"name":"BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124394981","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"BSHM Christmas meeting Birmingham, 5 December 2015","authors":"T. Crilly","doi":"10.1080/17498430.2016.1215858","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17498430.2016.1215858","url":null,"abstract":"purpose computer, the analytical engine, designed but never built by Charles Babbage. Professor Martin showed how Lovelace’s paper presented the analytical engine as an abstract machine. Also drawing on correspondence between Lovelace and Babbage she described how Lovelace’s speculations on the capabilities and potential of the machine mirror the concerns of modern computer scientists. We also heard what a remarkable person Lovelace was, not only in her background but in her efforts to learn, mathematics in particular, and her ambitions. Drawing on original sources and evaluating secondary material we were presented with a fresh and stimulating evaluation of Lovelace who was born in 1815, dying at age 36. We were all invited to visit the Ada Lovelace mathematical archive to help assess for ourselves this remarkable person. This archive draws on recent archival research and will be released online at www.claymath.org in December 2015. All the lectures were not only informative and stimulating but very enjoyable. If you were unable to be there or simply wish to relive the experience the lectures are available online at: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/women-in-mathematics-the-bicentenary-of-adalovelace Raymond Flood http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17498430.2016.1215857","PeriodicalId":211442,"journal":{"name":"BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129703842","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}