By Professor Alex D. D. Craik BSc, PhD, FRSE (auth.)
The nineteenth century used to be a key interval within the improvement of the mathematical sciences in Britain. topics corresponding to rigid-body dynamics, hydrodynamics, elasticity, optics, warmth, electrical energy and magnetism have been prolonged and given less attackable foundations; new components of natural arithmetic have been explored; and significant advances happened in statistics, astronomy, geology and glaciology.
The mid-19th century additionally introduced dramatic alterations to Cambridge college. prior to 1850, the single pathway to an honours measure used to be the Mathematical Tripos - taken by means of all aspiring scholars no matter what their destined careers - and the simplest instructing was once supplied by way of deepest tutors, the main well known being the striking William Hopkins.
This wide-ranging booklet tells the tale of Hopkins and the schooling and next careers of his best "wranglers", a lot of whom went directly to have illustrious careers as bishops, judges, politicians, scientists or educators. It attracts on first-hand bills of lifestyles at Cambridge to offer the reader a glimpse inside of its faculties, and it charts the evolution of the curriculum and the sluggish, usually reluctant, reforms that ended in Cambridge’s dominance of British greater schooling. It surveys the medical achievements of the time and considers the disproportionate contributions made by means of Scottish and Irish alumni in setting up a study neighborhood. steadily, Cambridge used to be reworked from a near-moribund establishment right into a world-renowned centre for the mathematical and actual sciences.
Many recognized scientists and mathematicians are profiled, between them G. eco-friendly, G.G. Stokes, J.C. Adams, W. Thomson (Lord Kelvin), A. Cayley and J.C. Maxwell, and plenty of lesser-known figures too, together with the 1st professors in Australia and the show to an Indian maharajah. moreover, and as a unique spotlight, Hopkins’ personal choice of pix of his most sensible scholars, attributed to the artist T.C. Wageman, are released the following – in color – for the 1st time.
Scholarly but non-technical, this can be a attention-grabbing examine Cambridge through the Victorian period that's obtainable to a person with an curiosity within the background of technological know-how and arithmetic; the background of schooling; the interplay of technology and non secular trust; the historical past of Cambridge college; and Victorian Britain commonly.
Alex D.D. Craik is a graduate of St Andrews and Cambridge. for a few years, he taught utilized arithmetic at St Andrews collage, the place he's shortly an emeritus professor.
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Extra info for Mr Hopkins' Men: Cambridge Reform and British Mathematics in the 19th Century
Example text
That the future physician learns neither physic, anatomy, botany, chemistry, nor pharmacy, nothing of all that constitutes his science and enables him to practice his art, is more than notorious . . he must go elsewhere to learn everything that is essential. He wonders how mathematical science qualifies a man as a statesman, legislator or government officer, while he feels unfit to become even a treasury clerk. If the University will not “reflect that its duty and business . . is, to educate 12 Atkinson (1825b).
Steventon A. De Morgan (4th), W. Hopkins (7th) W. Selwyn (6th) 1831 S. Earnshaw T. Gaskin G. D. Heath S. Laing T. Cotterill 1833 1834 1835 A. Ellice P. Kelland H. Cotterill J. R. Birks H. H. Pratt R. Stevenson R. Rawle 1836 A. W. F. N. J. Sylvester E. J. M. L. G. Stokes A. C. W. G. Mould P. Frost H. C. T. Simpson F. B. Hopkins M. O’Brien C. Colson J. Woolley J. B. Mayor B. O. Budd 1845 S. Parkinson W. Thomson R. Peirson 1846 L. L. P. Wilson I. Todhunter R. F. J. Roughton, A. W. Vinter W. B. H. M.
An appeal to his estranged maternal grandfather, “a man of wayward and singular disposition”, gained him £100 to attend university; and Atkinson screwed up his courage to approach Isaac Milner, the Dean of Carlisle who was also the head of Queens’ College, Cambridge. Milner was impressed by the young man, and recommended that he apply to Queens’, rather than to Trinity or St John’s as had been Solomon’s ambition. But he warned him that he had no hope of gaining a fellowship at Queens’. Atkinson was admitted to Queens’ in June 1816, as a sizar.