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         English Mathematicians:     more books (100)
  1. English Mathematicians: Isaac Newton, Alan Turing, Bertrand Russell, Ada Lovelace, Charles Babbage, J. J. Thomson, Andrew Wiles
  2. English for Mathematicians / Angliyskiy yazyk dlya matematikov by Shanshieva S.A., 2009
  3. John Arbuthnot,: Mathematician and satirist, (Harvard studies in English) by Lester M Beattie, 1935
  4. Chinese-English Glossary of the Mathematical Sciences by John DeFrancis, 1964
  5. English mathematicians (Mathematical memoirs) by Herbert Janson, 1997
  6. Twenty Lectures Delivered at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Vancouver, 1974 (American Mathematical Society Translations - Series , Vol 109) by B. C. 1974 International Congress of Mathematicians Vancouver, D. V. Anosov, 1997-07
  7. First International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians by China) International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians 1998 (Beijing, Le Yang, et all 2001-06
  8. Nine Papers from the International Congress of Mathematicians, 1986 (American Mathematical Society Translations Series 2)
  9. The rudiments or first principles of English grammar. By J. Nicholson, mathematician. by James Nicholson, 2010-07-23
  10. Transactions of the Conference of Army Mathematicians by Conference of Army Mathematicians, 2009-10-07
  11. The French Mathematician by Tom Petsinis, 1997-01
  12. George Green: An entry from Gale's <i>Science and Its Times</i> by P. Andrew Karam, 2000
  13. George Green Makes the First Attempt to Formulate a Mathematical Theory of Electricity and Magnetism (1828): An entry from Gale's <i>Science and Its Times</i> by Donald R. Franceschetti, 2000
  14. The history of the National Association of Mathematicians (NAM): The first thirty (30) years, 1969-1999 by Johnny L Houston, 2000

1. The Scientists: Edmund Halley.
Mathematics School UCV Aula Magna - U.C.V. © 2000 Mathematics School Science Faculty, Central University of Venezuela
http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Biographies/Science/Halley.htm
Edmund Halley
The most famous of English mathematicians and astronomers, Edmund Halley attended Queen's College, Oxford. In 1683, Halley published his theory of the variation of the magnet. In 1684, Halley conferred with Newton as to whether the centripetal force in the solar system varies inversely as the square of the distance. In 1686, he wrote on the trade winds and the monsoons. In his three voyages during 1698-1701, Halley was to test his magnetic variation theory, after which he was to become a professor of Geometry at Oxford. At the age of 64, he invented the diving bell. Halley died a venerated old man, at Greenwich in 1742. [I am fortunate, for among my books I have The Three Voyages of Edmund Halley in the Paramore: 1698-1701 ; edited by Norman J. W. Thrower; portraiture as Fp.; (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1981).]

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January, 1999. Peter Landry
peteblu@blupete.com

P.O. Box 1200,
Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
CANADA.

2. The Introduction Of Analysis Into England
French sources, and I therefore place these remarks at the close of my account ofthe French school; but I should add that the english mathematicians of this
http://www.maths.tcd.ie/pub/HistMath/People/19thCentury/RouseBall/RB_Engl19C.htm
The Introduction of Analysis into England
From `A Short Account of the History of Mathematics' (4th edition, 1908) by W. W. Rouse Ball. Ivory The Cambridge Analytical School Woodhouse Peacock ... Herschel The complete isolation of the English school and its devotion to geometrical methods are the most marked features in its history during the latter half of the eighteenth century; and the absence of any considerable contribution to the advancement of mathematical science was a natural consequence. One result of this was that the energy of English men of science was largely devoted to practical physics and practical astronomy, which were in consequence studied in Britain perhaps more than elsewhere.
Ivory
Almost the only English mathematician at the beginning of this century who used analytical methods, and whose work requires mention here, is Ivory, to whom the celebrated theorem in attractions is due. Sir James Ivory was born in Dundee in 1765, and died on September 21, 1842. After graduating at St. Andrews he became the managing partner in a flax-spinning company in Forfarshire, but continued to devote most of his leisure to mathematics. In 1804 he was made professor at the Royal Military College at Marlow, which was subsequently moved to Sandhurst; he was knighted in 1831. He contributed numerous papers to the Philosophical Transactions , the most remarkable being those on attractions. In one of these, in 1809, he shewed how the attraction of a homogeneous ellipsoid on an external point is a multiple of that of another ellipsoid on an internal point: the latter can be easily obtained. He criticized Laplace's solution of the method of least squares with unnecessary bitterness, and in terms which shewed that he had failed to understand it.

3. Pascal
See the Web site, http// scienceworld. com/ biography/ topics/ Mathematicians. html , for the bios of many famous scientists and mathematicians. dy/dx form that we know today). english mathematicians used Newton's fluxion notation almost exclusively until
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Pascal.html
Blaise Pascal
Born: 19 June 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 Aug 1662 in Paris, France
Click the picture above
to see six larger pictures Show birthplace location Previous (Chronologically) Next Biographies Index Previous (Alphabetically) Next Main index
Blaise Pascal was the third of Etienne Pascal 's children and his only son. Blaise's mother died when he was only three years old. In 1632 the Pascal family, Etienne and his four children, left Clermont and settled in Paris. Blaise Pascal's father had unorthodox educational views and decided to teach his son himself. Etienne Pascal decided that Blaise was not to study mathematics before the age of 15 and all mathematics texts were removed from their house. Blaise however, his curiosity raised by this, started to work on geometry himself at the age of 12. He discovered that the sum of the angles of a triangle are two right angles and, when his father found out, he relented and allowed Blaise a copy of Euclid At the age of 14 Blaise Pascal started to accompany his father to Mersenne 's meetings.

4. Early English Algebra
In the first half of the 16th century, Cuthbert Tonstall (14741559) and Robert Recorde(1510?-1558) were two of the foremost english mathematicians 2. They
http://vmoc.museophile.com/algebra/section3_2.html
Next: Algebra and Analytical Engines
Up: A Brief History of Algebra and Computing: An Eclectic Oxonian View
Previous: The Origins of Algebra
Early English Algebra
In the first half of the 16th century, Cuthbert Tonstall (1474-1559) and Robert Recorde (1510?-1558) were two of the foremost English mathematicians . They were the first mathematicians at the University of Cambridge whose lives have been recorded in any detail and as such may be considered founders of one of the most important centres of mathematics in the world. Both migrated to Oxford University during their careers. Robert Recorde, perhaps the more important of the two, became a Fellow of All Souls College at Oxford in 1531. The earliest use of the word algebra may be found in Recorde's Pathway of Knowledge (1551) in which he wrote: Also the rule of false position, with dyvers examples not onely vulgar, but some appertayning to the rule of Algebra. In 1557 he introduced the equality sign ` ' in his Whetstone of Witte , chosen ``bicause noe 2 thynges can be moare equalle'' (than two parallel lines of the same length). The symbols ` ' and ' were introduced for the first time in print in John Widman 's Arithmetic (Leipzig, 1489), but only came into general use in England after Recorde's

5. Mathematicians
History of Mathematicsthis site links to information about several of the mathematicians including Archimedes, Georg Cantor, Euclid, Leonard of Pisa (Fibonacci), Emmy Noether, and Zeno. Pascal's Triangle. english mathematicians. French Mathematicians
http://www.ramona.k12.ca.us/rhs/rhslmc/math/mathematicians.htm
Mathematicians General Reference Biographical Index includes biographies about: Apollonius, Archimedes, Charles Babbage, The Bernoulli family, Lewis Carroll, Georg Cantor, Christopher Clavius, Diophantes, Eratosthenes, Euclid, Pierre de Fermat, Leonard Pisano Fibonacci, Evaroste Galois, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Sophie Germain, Heron, Hypathia, Yang Hui, Felix Klein, Sofia Kovalevskaya, Leonardo da Vinci, Ada Byron Lovelace, August Mobius, Augustus de Morgan, John von Neumann, Emmy Noether, Pythagoras, Michael Stifel, Thales, Grace Chisolm Young, Zeno, Zhu Shi-jie. History of Mathematics this site links to information about several of the mathematicians including Archimedes, Georg Cantor, Euclid, Leonard of Pisa (Fibonacci), Emmy Noether, and Zeno. History of Mathematics this site hyperlinks to several sites related to the mathematicians on your list. Some of these links are: Zeno's Paradox of Motion, Archimedes and the Square Root of 3, Euclid's Plan and Proposition 6, Franklin's Magic Squares, and On Gauss's Mountains. Interactive Mathematics Miscellany and Puzzles examples of the theories put forth by many of the mathematicians can be located here. Some examples include: Apollonius, Archimedes, Cantor, Euclid, Heron, Moebius, and Pythagorius

6. AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL MONTHLY - February 1999
between Green and his aristocratic patron, and traces the events that led to Green'sultimate recognition as one of the most important english mathematicians.
http://www.maa.org/pubs/monthly_feb99.html
FEBRUARY 1999
Yueh-Gin Gung and Dr. Charles Y. Hu Award for Distinguished Service to Leonard Gillman.
by Kenneth A. Ross Does Mathematics Need New Axioms?
by Solomon Feferman
sf@csli.stanford.edu

From the time of his stunning incompleteness results in 1931 until the end of his life, Kurt Gödel called for the pursuit of new axioms to settle undecided arithmetical problems. And from 1947 on, with the publication of his unusual article "What is Cantor's continuum problem?" (as it happens, in the American Mathematical Monthly ) he called in addition for the pursuit of new axioms to settle Cantor's famous conjecture about the cardinal number of the continuum. In both cases, he pointed primarily to schemes of higher infinity in set theory as the direction in which to seek these new principles. Logicians have learned a great deal in recent years that is relevant to Gödel's program, but there are considerable differences of opinion as to what conclusions to draw from their results. The history of that work is traced from the beginning axiomatizations of number theory by Dedekind and Peano, and of set theory by Zermelo and Fraenkel, to the very present. We then turn to an examination of what axioms of higher set theory are needed to settle problems in finite combinatorics, the continuum problem, and scientifically applicable mathematics, and close with some controversial conclusions. Statistical Independence and Normal Numbers: An Aftermath to Mark Kac's Carus Monograph

7. Devlin's Angle: Dear New Student
Leaving for a moment the english mathematicians of the first half of the eighteenthcentury, we come next to a number of continental writers who barely escape
http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_nov96.html
Devlin's Angle
November 1996
Spreading the word
In a splendid article in September's Math Horizons , William Dunham celebrated the three-hundred year anniversary of the appearance of the world's first calculus textbook. That's right, the first calculus text hit the shelves in 1696. They have been growing steadily in size (if not mathematical content) ever since. That first genre setting volume was Guillaume Francois Antoine de l'Hospital's Analysis of the Infinitely Small. Written for the mathematical community, l'Hospital's book contained no problem sets, no color-highlighted definitions, and no full-color photographs, diagrams, and illustrations. But as Dunham points out, it was a calculus textbook, designed to "spread the word" about the then new techniques of the differential calculus. Invented (or, if you prefer, discovered) just a few years earlier by Isaac Newton and later Gottfried Leibniz, a great deal of the early development work in calculus had been done by the Bernoulli brothers, Jakob and Johann. (Among the early uses to which the calculus was put was Johann Bernoulli's discovery of the catenary curve, the shape assumed by a chain suspended between two supports.) In fact, until the appearance of l'Hospital's book, Newton, Leibniz, and the two Bernoullis were pretty well the only people on the face of the earth who knew much about calculus. Born in 1661, l'Hospital was a French nobleman of fairly minor rank who developed a keen interest in mathematics at an early age. He met Johann Bernoulli in 1691, shortly after the latter had made his discovery of the catenary. Eager to learn about this marvellous new technique calculus, l'Hospital hired Bernoulli to teach him.

8. Project-HTML
With further related links on papers and books he has published FamousMathematicians english mathematicians. (De Moivre included
http://students.bath.ac.uk/ns1galf/Project.html
Abraham de Moivre
In short: Born in Vitry, France on May 26th
Educated in humanties at Protestant Colleges - Sedan and Samaur
Studied mathematics under Ozanam in Paris
Fled to England. Began tutoring mathematics
Elected to the Royal Society
Appointed to the Royal Society's Grand Commission to settle the debate between Newton and Leibnitz over who discoverd Calculus
Published the first edition of the Doctrine of Chances
Published Miscellenea Analytica
Died in London on November 27th
Main Findings:
-Discovered 'de Moivre's theorem' of complex numbers
-Did important work on the Probablility theory
-Discovered the approximation to the Binomial Probability distribution, later known as the Normal or Gaussian distribution -Theory of Reccuring series -Completed Cote's work on the theory of Partial fractions
A Biography of de Moivre's life
Abraham de Moivre was born at Vitry in Champagne, France on May 26th, 1667. From the ages of 11 to 15 he studied Humanties at the Protestant College at Sedan. After that de Moivre studied logic at Samaur. It was only when his family moved to Paris did he become interested in mathematics. He studied at the College de Harcourt and took private maths lessons under the great Ozanam De Moivre emigrated to England in 1685 following the revecoation of the Edict of Nantes. Without friends, family and money the only thing he had going for him was his knowledge in mathematics. De Moivre established himself by tutoring maths to sons of nobleman.

9. Elliott
theory which had been developed on the Continent of Europe, but he presented it ina style which was more familiar to english mathematicians familiar with the
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Elliott.html
Edwin Bailey Elliott
Born: 1 June 1851 in Oxford, England
Died: 21 July 1937 in Oxford, England
Click the picture above
to see two larger pictures Show birthplace location Previous (Chronologically) Next Biographies Index Previous (Alphabetically) Next Main index
Edwin Elliott was educated at Magdalen School in Oxford then, in 1869, he entered Magdalen College of the University of Oxford to study mathematics. After outstanding achievements at university, Elliott became a Fellow and Mathematical Tutor of Queen's College, Oxford in 1874. In addition to his Fellowship at Queen's College, Elliott was appointed a lecturer in mathematics at Corpus Christi College in Oxford in 1884. These appointments came to an end in 1892 when Elliott became the first Waynflete professor of Pure Mathematics. This chair was named after William of Waynflete, the English lord chancellor and bishop of Winchester who founded Magdalen College in the 15th century. The Waynflete chair came with a Fellowship at Magdalen College so Elliott was again attached to his old College. Elliott held the Waynflete chair for 29 years until his retirement in 1921. During this time he was much involved with the London Mathematical Society, being President of the Society from 1896 to 1898. A few years before this, in 1891, he had been honoured by being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. As Chaundy writes in [1]:-

10. Paley
.. he was already recognised as the ablest of the group of young english mathematicianswho have been inspired by the genius of GH Hardy and JE Littlewood.
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Paley.html
Raymond Edward Alan Christopher Paley
Born: 7 Jan 1907 in England
Died: 7 April 1933 in Banff, Alberta, Canada
Previous (Chronologically) Next Biographies Index Previous (Alphabetically) Next Main index
Raymond Paley was educated at Eton. From there he entered Trinity College, Cambridge where he showed himself the most brilliant student among a remarkable collection of fellow undergraduates. He was taught at Cambridge by Hardy and Littlewood and it was under Littlewood 's supervision that he undertook research. While Paley was undertaking research at Cambridge, Zygmund spent the academic year 1930-31 there. Paley had already proved impressive results on Fourier series and had collaborated with Littlewood , his supervisor. Zygmund discovered Paley's extraordinary talent and the two worked jointly on existence proofs, brilliantly applying ideas from Borel 's Zygmund 's book Trigonometric Series published in 1935 owes a debt to the joint work that he carried out with Paley. Norbert Wiener was proving important results in areas of interest to Paley so he applied for an International Research Fellowship to allow him to travel to the United States to collaborate with him. Norbert Wiener wrote in [1]:- Soon after his arrival in America, however, certain studies of lacunary series which Paley had already begun suggested a new attack on the theory of interpolation and allied trigonometrical problems. These results led successively to the study of quasi-analytic functions, of entire functions of order one-half, and of many related questions.

11. Mathematicians Of The Seventeenth And Eighteenth Centuries
Daniel Bernoulli (1700 1782). The english mathematicians of the EighteenthCentury David Gregory (1661 - 1708); Edmund Halley (1656
http://physics.hallym.ac.kr/reference/physicist/RB_Hist.html
Mathematicians of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Origin
These pages are currently under construction. Available here are accounts of the lives and works of mathematicians of the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth century, adapted from A Short Account of the History of Mathematics by W. W. Rouse Ball (4th Edition, 1908). These biographies constitute part of the collection of online material relating to the history of mathematics at the School of Mathematics , Trinity College, Dublin. D.R. Wilkins
School of Mathematics

Trinity College, Dublin

dwilkins@maths.tcd.ie

12. Leibniz, Gottfried (1646-1716) -- From Eric Weisstein's World Of Scientific Biog
It is unfortunate that continental and english mathematicians remained embroiledfor decades in a heated and pointless priority dispute over the discovery of
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Leibniz.html

Branch of Science
Mathematicians Branch of Science Philosophers ... German
Leibniz, Gottfried (1646-1716)

German philosopher, physicist, and mathematician whose mechanical studies included forces and weights. He believed in a deterministic universe which followed a "pre-established harmony." He extended the work of his mentor Huygens from kinematics to include dynamics He was self-taught in mathematics, but nonetheless developed calculus independently of Newton . Although he published his results slightly after Newton , his notation was by far superior (including the integral sign and derivative notation), and is still in use today. It is unfortunate that continental and English mathematicians remained embroiled for decades in a heated and pointless priority dispute over the discovery of calculus Leibniz made many contributions to the study of differential equations discovering the method of separation of variables reduction of homogeneous equations to separable ones, and the procedure for solving first order linear equations. He used the idea of the determinant 50 years before Cramer , and did work on the multinomial theorem Leibniz combined the Scala Naturae with his plenum (continuous) view of nature, and called the result the Law of Continuity. He believed that it was not possible to put organisms into discrete categories, stating "Natura non facit saltus" (Nature does nothing in leaps).

13. Math Forum - Ask Dr. Math
It's from a Web page called The english mathematicians of the Eighteenth Century_A Short Account of the History of Mathematics_ (4th edition, 1908) by WW
http://mathforum.org/dr.math/problems/iquindsl2.10.96.html

Associated Topics
Dr. Math Home Search Dr. Math
De Moivre's Theorem
Date: 2/10/96 at 10:9:18 From: Anonymous Subject: Use of DeMoivre's Theorem What is the usefulness of DeMoivre's theorem? http://www.maths.tcd.ie/pub/HistMath/People/18thCentury/RouseBall/RB_Engl18C.html Associated Topics
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14. BSHM: Abstracts -- A
of Elizabethan mathematics’, Studies in history and philosophy of science 26 (1995),559591 english mathematicians were prominent in imperialist circles.
http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/bshm/abstracts/A.html
The British Society for the History of Mathematics HOME About BSHM BSHM Council Join BSHM ... Search
BSHM Abstracts
A B C D ... Z These listings contain all abstracts that have appeared in BSHM Newsletters up to Newsletter 46. BSHM Abstracts - A Aaboe, A, and J. L. Berggren, ‘Didactical and other remarks on some theorems of Archimedes and infinitesimals’, Centaurus
Theorems 17-20 of On the sphere and cylinder I are singularly opaque for students today, but look obvious when considered as results about clusters of elemental cones or pyramids with infinitestimal bases. Archimedes may also have looked at things in this way, which may have originated with Democritus. Abeles, Francine F., ‘Henry John Stephen Smith at Oxford’, Proceedings of the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Mathematics
In his outgoing presidential address to the London Mathematical Society in 1876, the Oxford Savilian professor Henry Smith (1826-1883) gave an almost Hilbertian overview of the state and prospects of pure mathematics, with a perceptive account of its recent history. Acerbi, F., 'Plato: Parmenides 149a7-c3: a proof by complete induction?'

15. BSHM: Gazetteer -- A
Here he tutored many young mathematicians of the time, including Wallis, Ward, Moore,Scarburgh and Wren; and all english mathematicians for the next century
http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/bshm/zingaz/A.html
The British Society for the History of Mathematics HOME About BSHM BSHM Council Join BSHM ... Search
BSHM Gazetteer A
Main Gazetteer A B C D ... Z 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] Return to the top.
Aberdeen
At one time there were two universities here (Marischal College and King's College)as many as in all England. They merged in 1860 and had to dismiss duplicate professors. One of the professors of natural philosophy, since 1856, was James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879), who was released, supposedly on the grounds that he could get another job while the other professor couldn't. The other man was Faraday's nephew David Thomson, a capable teacher and senior to Maxwell, so perhaps there were other reasons for the decision. In 1858 Maxwell married Katherine Mary Dewar, daughter of the Principal of Marischal College.

16. The Back-Staff
The BackStaff. Although the cross-staff was popular with sailors, it had someserious defects, which were often pointed out by the english mathematicians.
http://www.rootsweb.com/~mosmd/backstaf.htm
    Click here to return to the Main Page of
    The Back-Staff
    Although the cross-staff was popular with sailors, it had some serious defects, which were often pointed out by the English mathematicians. If the staff were not positioned correctly on the cheekbone, the eye would not be the terminal point in the axis. The result would be a misreading of the angle. Another problem was the blinding glare when a mariner was observing the meridian altitude of the sun. In the northern latitudes, the brightness of the summer nights made star sights impractical.
    In about 1594 John Davis, an English captain, developed a simple back-staff which eliminated the problems of parallax and the glare of sun sights as well as the problems involved in sighting two widely separated objects simultaneously. Davis' back staff was intended to be an improvement on the mariners' quadrants, astrolabes and cross-staves. The Davis back-staff consisted of a graduated staff, a half-cross in the shape of an arc of a circle on the radius of the staff with a fixed vane, and a brass horizon vane with a slit in it at the fore-end of the staff.
    The observer placed the staff on his shoulder and stood with his back to the sun. With the horizon vane lined up with the horizon, he slid the half-cross back and forth until the shadow of its vane fell across the slit in the bottom vane while the horizon was visible through the slit. By doing this the observer was able to sight both the sun and the horizon while his back was towards the sun.

17. The Mapmakers: An Essay In Four Parts - Pathfinders And Passageways
Before the close of the 16th century, english mathematicians had perfected triangulation(navigation and surveying by rightangled triangles) through plane
http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/2/24/h24-230.1-e.html
The Mapmakers: An Essay in Four Parts
Mapmaking
17th Century
During the early 17th century, mapmaking took a huge leap forward. The instruments had improved; mathematical and astronomical concepts necessary to making accurate measurements had evolved; observers were better trained; and very importantly strong motives had arisen to make accurate maps. Before the close of the 16th century, English mathematicians had perfected triangulation (navigation and surveying by right-angled triangles) through plane trigonometry. This development allowed navigators to set courses on any compass angle and permitted surveyors to produce much more accurate surveys on land. Although the mariner's compass remained in use, most compasses were now manufactured to read in degrees as well as points, permitting finer observations and the use of trigonometric tables. The better seamen learned how to correct their compasses for declination and early in the century the English had determined the existence of annual compass variation.
The Davis quadrant, or backstaff

18. AIM25: Royal Society: Lubbock, Sir John William (1803-1865)
Mathematically, he was foremost among english mathematicians in adopting Laplace'sdoctrine of probability and with Drinkwater was the author of a joint
http://www.aim25.ac.uk/cgi-bin/search2?coll_id=5972&inst_id=18

19. Fermat
He was mostly isolated from other mathematicians, though he wroteregularly to two english mathematicians, Digby and Wallis. He
http://www.math.wichita.edu/history/men/fermat.html
Pierre de Fermat Pierre de Fermat (pronounced Fer-mah') was born in southwestern France in 1601. His father was a wealthy leather merchant who made it possible for Pierre to receive a monastery education and to attend the University of Toulouse. By the time he was 30, Pierre was a civil servant whose job was to act as a link between petitioners from Toulouse to the King of France and an enforcer of royal decrees from the King to the local people. Evidence suggests he was considerate and merciful in his duties. Since he was also required to act as an appeal judge in important local cases, he did everything he could to be impartial. To avoid socializing with those who might one day appear before him in court, he became involved in mathematics and spent as much free time as he could in its study. He was so skilled in the subject that he could be called a professional amateur. He was mostly isolated from other mathematicians, though he wrote regularly to two English mathematicians, Digby and Wallis. He also corresponded with French mathematician, Father Mersenne (pronounced Mer-seen') who was trying to increase discussion and the exchange of ideas among French mathematicians. One was Blaise Pascal who, with Fermat, established a new branch of math - probability theory. Fermat himself was secretive and, since he rarely wrote complete proofs or explanations of how he got his answers, was mischievously frustrating for others to understand. He loved to announce in letters that he had just solved a problem in math but then refused to disclose its solution, leaving it for others to figure out.

20. Teaching Mathematics A Brief History
One of the best english mathematicians of the 16th century, Robert Recorde, publishedtwo books suitable for school as well as selfstudy The Grounde of Artes
http://www.pims.math.ca/education/two-part/history.html

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