The British Society for the History of Mathematics
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Written by David Singmaster (zingmast@sbu.ac.uk ). Links to relevant external websites are being added occasionally to this gazetteer but the BSHM has no control over the availability or contents of these links. Please inform the BSHM Webster (A.Mann@gre.ac.uk) of any broken links.
[When the gazetteer was edited for serial publication in the BSHM Newsletter, references were omitted since the bibliography was too substantial to be included. Publication on the web permits references to be included for material now being added to the website, but they are still absent from material originally prepared for the Newsletter - TM, August 2002]
Geoffrey Chaucer had an estate somewhere near, where he probably wrote The Canterbury Tales.
Joseph Larmor was Professor of Natural Philosophy at Queen's College, Galway, in 1880-1885.
James Stirling (1692-1770) was born in Garden, to the right of the A811 between Arnprior and Buchlyvie.
John Napier (1550-1617) is said to have spent much of his life at Gartness. This is probably the Merchiston Hall in Stirlingshire which belonged to the family. Admiral Sir Charles Napier (1786-1860) was born here.
This is one of the few places in the world where volcanic basalt has cooled in a columnar formation. The columns approximately form a hexagonal tessellation and tend to break off to produce a pavement with this pattern. A calculation by a Mr. Mallet (c1900?) shows that the hexagonal tessellation requires least energy, but I wonder how valid this is. One cannot see the full length of the columns, but it is estimated that they may be 20 ft in height before merging into the underlying irregular basaltic mass. It is estimated that 99% of the columns are hexagonal; only one triangular column is known. Though many of the hexagons are pretty regular, some have a side twice as long as their smallest side. Sides vary from 8 in to 18 in. The pillars break up into sections of length 6 in to 36 in, with a concavo-convex junction rather than a plane junction. Other examples are at Kirkjubaejarklaustri, Iceland, and Devil's Postpile, California.
The University of Glasgow was founded in 1451. George Sinclair was first Professor of Mathematics from 1691. (See Robert Rankins article in BSHM Newsletter 31 (1966), pp. 44-46). Robert Simson (1687-1768) was the third Professor for 50 years from 1711 to 1761. He was largely self-taught as no lectures in mathematics were available when he was a student. Simson's 1756 edition of Euclid was in use until the early 20C. Colin MacLaurin (1698-1746) entered in 1709 at age 11 and soon discovered mathematics, in which he was encouraged by Simson. The present student mathematical society is named for him. Adam Smith was a student in 1737-1740 and later Professor of Logic (1751-1764), and also of Moral Philosophy (1752-1764) and Lord Rector in 1787. James Stirling and John Sinclair were also students. Stirling surveyed the river in 1752.
James Watt (1736-1819) got his start in life as Mathematical Instrument Maker to the University, c1756. Since he had not served a normal apprenticeship, he could not join the guild. However the University was outside the jurisdiction of the guilds and could appoint him. His first responsibility was to systematise a donated collection of astronomical equipment. The Hunterian Museum of the University preserves the model Newcomen engine which John Anderson, professor of Natural Philosophy, asked Watt to make work in winter 1763-1764. It was his work on this that inspired his invention of the separate condenser, with the subsequent tripling of the efficiency of the steam engine. Watt was walking upon Glasgow Green on a Sunday afternoon in early 1765 when the idea of the separate condenser occurred to him, inspired by Black's teaching. Watt was then in a small workshop off King Street. The Engineering Gallery of the Glasgow Museum and Art Gallery, in Kelvingrove Park, has two steam engines built by Watt in the late 18C. The current Engineering building is named for him.
William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) (1824-1907) was the son of James Thomson who came from Belfast to Glasgow as Professor of Mathematics in 1832. William entered the University in 1834 at age 10 (or 11), graduating in May 1840 at age 16 (or 17). On 1 May 1840, he borrowed Fourier's Théorie Analytique de la Chaleur from the University library and mastered it in a fortnight on a trip through Europe, reading it in Frankfurt when he was supposed to be studying German. After a period at Cambridge and Paris, he was elected Professor of Natural Philosophy on 11 Sep 1846, holding this chair for 53 years and creating the first British (or world?) laboratory for physical science and it evolved into a research laboratory with strong industrial applications. His address was 2 The College, Glasgow. In 1851, he presented a paper to the Royal Society of Edinburgh which first stated the second law of thermodynamics. Statue in Kelvingrove Park in front of the University. He is buried in the Necropolis, east of the Cathedral, but other sources say he is buried in Westminster Abbey.
James Thomson, brother of Kelvin, became Professor of Civil Engineering in 1873. He contributed to thermodynamics and to the harmonic analyser. (The Thomson's sister, Mrs Elizabeth King, was grandmother to Ramsay MacDonald, the Prime Minister.)
There is a statue of Thomas Carlyle in Kelvingrove Park.
Thomas Muir (1844-1934) was an assistant in mathematics, and a Chair was named for him in 1966.
George Alexander Gibson (1858-1930) was assistant at the University of Glasgow, later professor at the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College (now Strathclyde University) from 1895, then professor at the University of Glasgow from 1909 until his retirement in 1927. He was interested in the history of mathematics and in 1928 his friends raised funds to endow a lecture on the history of mathematics, delivered about every four years. Speakers have been: Einstein, John Dougall, Aitken, Turnbull, Coulson, Needham, Collingwood, Truesdell, Whiteside, Schlapp, Whitrow, Fowler. [Robert A. Rankin, George A. Gibson and the Gibson lectureship in the history of mathematics, BSHM Newsletter 29 (Summer 1995) 7-8.]
Gibson was succeeded by Thomas Murray MacRobert (1884-1962) during 1927-1954. MacRobert was succeeded by Robert Alexander Rankin (1915- ) during 1954-1982. After a gap due to financial reasons, Robert Winston Keith Odoni (1947- ) succeeded Rankin in 1989. A Simson Chair was founded in 1955 and held by Ian Naismith Sneddon (1919- ) in 1956-1985.
Frederic Soddy (1877-1956) was Lecturer in Physical Chemistry from 1904 until at least 1914 and carried out much of his work on isotopes here which gave the theoretical basis for the periodic table. He received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1921. Mathematicians will know him for his result on the radii of four touching circles.
A. R. Forsyth was born in Glasgow; Alexander Thom, the archaeo-astronomer, was a student and learned astronomy here; Horatio Scott Carslaw (1870-1954), Robert John Tainsh Bell (1877-1963) and James Morton Hyslop (1907-1984) were students who took up posts abroad and wrote books of some note. Hans Zassenhaus spent a year here just after the Second War.
The University has portraits of Simson, James Thomson, MacRobert, Rankin, etc. For recent history, see Robert A. Rankin, Mathematics, in A Faculty for Science A Unified Diversity A Century of Science in the University of Glasgow; ed. by Robert Young Thomson, University of Glasgow 1993, pp. 19-31.
Donald Michies Turing Institute was (is?) at George House, 36 North Hanover Street.
The University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, descends from Anderson's Institution of 1796, a model for the Royal Institution and Birkbeck College, etc. It became Anderson's University in 1828, then Anderson's College in 1877, the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College in 1887, the Royal Technical college in 1912, the Royal College of Science and Technology in 1956, finally merging with the Scottish College of Commerce to form the University of Strathclyde in 1964. John Anderson (1726-1796) was professor of natural philosophy at the University of Glasgow from 1757 until his death. He left the bulk of his estate to found the Institution. [Ian Tweddle, British Libraries #8: The Andersonian Library, University of Strathclyde, BSHM Newsletter 29 (Summer 1995) 32-35.]
Has long been famous for its mystic connections with King Arthur and the Holy Grail. Glastonbury Tor is a steep hill rising 521 feet above the surrounding fenland. The top of the Tor is surrounded by several rings of terraces and ridges. In this century, mystics have divined that these ridges formed a labyrinth and eventually a standard pathway evolved by 1984, making the largest labyrinth in the world.
Was the birthplace of Charles Thomson Rees Wilson (1869-1959), inventor of the cloud chamber (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1927). (I can't locate this in my atlas)
Charles Wheatstone (1802-1875) was born in Gloucester.
Has been the home of Charterhouse School since 1872. Harold Crabtree (d. 1915), author of a famous text on gyroscopes, was a master.
There are two hamlets of Woolsthorpe near Grantham, one to the west and one six miles to the south. Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was born on Christmas day 1642 in the southerly one, next to Colsterworth, sometimes called Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth. His birthplace, Woolsthorpe Manor, is a National Trust property. The kitchen has some graffiti thought to be due to the young Newton. Newton carved a sundial on the wall of Colsterworth Church. He retired here during the Great Plague in 1665-1666 and formulated most of his greatest discoveries here.
Newton's apple tree at the Manor died and was cut down in 1820, but grafts had been taken and established there and at Belton House, a bit to the north of Grantham. The Woolsthorpe Manor tree provided grafts for Kew Gardens in 1943. In 1940, all these trees were 'Flower of Kent', a large bright green apple which shows crimson where it is exposed to the sun. This apple was first described in 1629. Sir David Brewster's Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton says "I saw the apple tree in 1814 and brought away a portion of one of its roots. The tree was so much decayed that it was taken down in 1820, and the wood of it carefully preserved by Mr. Turnor of Stoke Rocheford." Voltaire's Letters Concerning the English Nation first published the story of Newton and the apple in 1733. Voltaire said he had the story from Catherine Barton Conduitt, Newton's step-niece and housekeeper.
The King's School, Grantham, has a bit of wood on which Newton carved his name while a school boy. The schoolroom in which Newton learned is the present (1927) school's assembly hall. There is a statue in the town, on St. Peter's Hill. There are some Newton relics in the Grantham Museum, St. Peter's Hill. There is a memorial obelisk in the grounds of Stoke Rochford Hall in nearby Stoke Rochford, near one of Newton's first schools, believed to have been in Skillington Church. An Isaac Newton Shopping Centre is conspicuous from the train!
Has a statue of James Watt (1736-1819) who was born here.
Charles Edward Spearman was recalled to staff service during the Boer War and served as Deputy Assistant Adjutant General to Guernsey in 1900-1902, where he met and married Frances Henrietta Priaulx Aikman.
In 1868, Lewis Carroll leased The Chestnuts, 3 Castle Hill, off Quarry Street, Guildford, about 20 miles SW of London. This was on behalf of his sisters as he was the oldest brother and hence head of the family after his father's death. His six unmarried sisters lived there until 1919, along with other relatives, sometimes to the extent that some of them had to be put into nearby lodgings and/or friends houses. Carroll himself sometimes had to stay at the White Lion. He visited The Chestnuts regularly from 1868 (averaging perhaps 50 nights per year) and he even voted locally. In his later years, when his stammer had improved, Carroll sometimes preached at St. Mary's Church at the corner of Quarry Street and Mill Lane. A good deal of his later work was done or contemplated here; in particular, in July 1874, he was walking in the hills when the line For the Snark was a Boojum, you see popped into his head and eventually led to the poem. He stayed here on his retirement in 1897. He died here in 1898 (1932 plaque on the gatepost) . He is buried near the mortuary chapel in the Old Mount Cemetery, off Old Farnham Road across the river. In 1997, the house came up for sale; the asking price was 750,000.
There are some Carrollian mementoes in the Guildford Museum, Castle Arch, Quarry Street, close to Castle Hill. These include various toys belonging to the family and examples of the Looking Glass Box and the Wonderland Stamp Case. In the adjacent room of old toys is a zoetrope that belonged to the family. As one goes up Castle Hill, past the Castle grounds, there is an detached part of the grounds to the right with a statue of Alice passing through the looking-glass. In the Millmead park,is a bronze of Alice watching the White Rabbit.
The family of Alan Turing (1912-1954) lived at 5 Ennismore Avenue, Guildford, from 1927.
Written by David Singmaster. Last updated on 28th February 2003 by TM (A.Mann@gre.ac.uk). Copyright © BSHM and David Singmaster 1998 - 2003. All rights reserved.
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