Gunpowder and Geometry: The Life of Charles Hutton, Pit Boy, Mathematician and Scientific Rebel
February 2019
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Book
August, 1755. Newcastle, on the north bank of the Tyne.
Mathematics
Editorial
September 2018
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Journal article
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BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics
James Q. Davies; Ellen Lockhart (Editors). Sound Knowledge: Music and Science in London, 1789–1851. vi + 257 pp., figs., index. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 2017. $55 (cloth).
March 2018
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Other
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Isis
The Correspondence of Charles Hutton
February 2018
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Book
<p>This book contains complete transcriptions, with notes, of the 133 surviving letters of Charles Hutton (1737–1823). The letters span the period 1770–1823 and are drawn from nearly thirty different archives. Most have not been published before. Hutton was one of the most prominent British mathematicians of his generation. He played roles at the Royal Society, the Royal Military Academy, the Board of Longitude, the ‘philomath’ network, and elsewhere. He worked on the explosive force of gunpowder and the mean density of the earth, winning the Royal Society’s Copley Medal in 1778; he was also at the focus of a celebrated row at the Royal Society in 1784 over the place of mathematics there. He is of particular historical interest because of the variety of roles he played in British mathematics, the dexterity with which he navigated, exploited, and shaped personal and professional networks in mathematics and science, and the length and public profile of his career. Hutton corresponded nationally and internationally, and his correspondence illustrates the overlapping, intersection, and interaction of the different networks in which Hutton moved. It therefore provides new information about how Georgian mathematics was structured socially and how mathematical careers worked in that period. It provides a rare and valuable view of a mathematical culture that would substantially cease to exist when British mathematics embraced continental methods from the early nineteenth century onwards.</p>
The Correspondence of Charles Hutton
February 2018
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Scholarly edition
This book contains all the letters that are known to survive from the correspondence of Charles Hutton (1737-1823).
Mathematics
Editorial
January 2018
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Journal article
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BSHM Bulletin
Sing Aloud Harmonious Spheres
September 2017
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Chapter
John Birchensha: Writings on Music
July 2017
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Scholarly edition
94 His diagrams show that Birchensha is confused here. Arithmetic division
should result in a set of notes for which the differences between pairs of string
lengths are constant; Birchensha's second and third examples, however, show
notes whose string length ratios are constant. the first example shows a set of
notes whose string lengths obey no consistent rule. 95 this paragraph is probably
intended as a gesture towards the fact that every note (of the diatonic genus) in
Birchensha's ...
Charles Hutton and the ‘Dissensions’ of 1783–84: scientific networking and its failures
March 2017
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Journal article
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Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science
<jats:p>This paper proposes a fresh look at the ‘Dissensions’ that held up scientific business at the Royal Society during the spring of 1784. It focuses attention on the career and personal networks of Charles Hutton, whose dismissal from the role of Foreign Secretary ignited the row. It shows that the incident had no single cause but was the outcome of several factors that made Hutton intolerable to Joseph Banks, President of the Society, and of several factors that made Banks unpopular as President among a group of about 40 otherwise rather disparate Fellows.</jats:p>
Foreword
March 2017
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Chapter
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Successful Science Communication
Charles Hutton: ‘One of the greatest mathematicians in Europe’?
January 2017
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Journal article
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BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics
Filling a Gap in the History of : An Exciting Discovery
March 2016
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Journal article
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MATHEMATICAL INTELLIGENCER
4 Willughby’s Mathematics
January 2016
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Chapter
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Virtuoso by Nature: The Scientific Worlds of Francis Willughby FRS (1635-1672)
Greek mathematics in English: the work of Sir Thomas L. Heath (1861–1940)
A 'lost' chapter in the calculation of pi: Baron Zach and MS Bodleian 949
August 2015
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Journal article
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HISTORIA MATHEMATICA
Mathematical tables, Pi, Baron Zach
Consuming Mathematics: John Ward'sYoung Mathematician's Guide(1707) and Its Owners
March 2015
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Journal article
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Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies
John Wallis: Writings on Music
October 2014
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Scholarly edition
neither did salmon's earlier, controversial work on the proposed reform of musical
notation find any echo in Wallis's writings. Conversely, Salmon showed no
interest at all in the coincidence theory of consonance. the main point of contact ...
Music
Printing mathematics in the early modern world Research symposium
September 2014
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Report
The Compendium Musicae of Rene Descartes
March 2014
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Scholarly edition
Rene Descartes's Compendium musicae was one of the most widely-read texts on the mathematics of music in the second half of the seventeenth century, offering a succinct and lucid summary of its subject. It was translated into English, French and Dutch before the end of the century--though its idiosyncratic geometrical approach to music drew criticism as well as praise--and its sophisticated mathematical thinking attracted a number of later scholars to explore its ideas further in print or manuscript. This volume presents for the first time a critical edition of the English translation of the Compendium, published in 1653 by the natural philosopher Walter Charleton. Also included are the unpublished manuscript treatises written by Nicolaus Mercator and Isaac Newton developing similar ideas to those in the Compendium, and the printed remarks of William Brouncker which appeared with Charleton's translation. This rich collection of texts, most of them appearing in critical editions for the first time, provides a unique view of the early reception of Descartes's musical treatise in England.
Defending Hypatia: Ramus, Savile, and the Renaissance Rediscovery of Mathematical History
January 2014
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Journal article
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Annals of Science
Thomas Salmon: A proposal to perform musick and related writings, 1685-1706
January 2013
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Scholarly edition
C 130, fols 27–8) are all that survive of a correspondence between Salmon and
Wallis which, it is implied, included at least two earlier letters from Wallis and one
from Salmon. Salmon had apparently conveyed papers to Wallis, which May
have been in effect a draft of the Proposal or of part of it; Wallis had returned
these and supplied Salmon with some information about the possibility of using
moveable frets. Evidently work on what would become the Proposal was well
under way, ...
Music
Thomas Salmon: An essay to the advancement of musick and the ensuing controversy, 1672-3
January 2013
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Scholarly edition
... which is fitted with a peculiar power for their reception. * Running head: The
Advantages of Mnsick. He that hath any one sense good, is capable of Thomas
Salmon, An Essay to the Advancement of Musick (1672) 55.
Music
Poor Robin's Prophecies A Curious Almanac, and the Everyday Mathematics of Georgian Britain
October 2012
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Book
Benjamin Wardaugh tells the story of the rumbustious 'Poor Robin of Saffron Walden', and the rise of popular science in Georgian England.
Mathematics
The History of the History of Mathematics
January 2012
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Book
The writing of mathematical histories has a long history, one which has seldom received scholarly attention. Mathematical history, and mathematical biography, raise distinctive issues of method and approach to which different periods have responded in different ways. At a time of increasing interest in the history of mathematics, this book attempts to show something of the trajectory that history has taken in the past. It presents seven case studies illustrating the different ways that mathematical histories have been written since the seventeenth century, ranging from the 'historia' of John Wallis to the recent re-presentation of Thomas Harriot's manuscripts online. It considers both the ways that individual reputations and biographies have been shaped differently in different circumstances, and the ways that the discipline of mathematics has itself been variously presented through the writing of its history.
A Wealth of Numbers An Anthology of 500 Years of Popular Mathematics Writing
January 2012
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Book
A unique window into the hidden history of popular mathematics, A Wealth of Numbers will provide many hours of fun and learning to anyone who loves popular mathematics and science.
Mathematics
'Let us put on the shade of Newton': Isaac Newton on stage, 1829-2006
July 2010
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Journal article
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BSHM Bulletin
How to Read Historical Mathematics
March 2010
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Book
Is it original or a translation? Why is it important today? Wardhaugh teaches readers to think about what the original text might have looked like, to consider where and when it was written, and to formulate questions of their own.
Mathematics
Diagrams and mathematics in the French and English translations of Descartes’ Compendium musicae
January 2010
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Chapter
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Franco–British interactions in the sciences
John Birchensha Writings on Music
January 2010
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Scholarly edition
Writings on Music John Birchensha Christopher Field, Benjamin Wardhaugh.
semitones, semiditones, ditones and so on.146 This statement is, strictly, true of
Birchensha's Pythagorean system, where, since no temperament is ever
performed ...
Music
Mathematics in English printed books, 1473-1800: A bibliometric analysis
Formal causes and mechanical causes: The analogy of the musical instrument in late seventeenth-century natural philosophy
January 2008
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Chapter
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Intersections
Mathematics, music, and experiment
January 2008
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Chapter
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Oxford Handbook of the History of Mathematics
Music, Experiment and Mathematics in England, 1653-1705
January 2008
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Book
This book constitutes an overarching history of quantitative music theory in the seventeenth century, focusing namely on the applications of mathematical and mechanical methods of understanding to music produced in England between 1653 and ...
Music
Poor Robin and Merry Andrew: mathematical humour in Restoration England
November 2007
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Journal article
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BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics
The logarithmic ear: Pietro Mengoli's mathematics of music
July 2007
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Journal article
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Annals of Science
In 1670, the Bolognese mathematician Pietro Mengoli published his Speculationi di musica, a highly original work attempting to found the mathematical study of music on the anatomy of the ear. His anatomy was idiosyncratic and his mathematics extraordinarily complex, and he proposed a unique double mechanism of hearing. He analysed in detail the supposed behaviour of the subtle part of the air inside the ear, and the patterns of strokes made on the eardrum by simultaneous sounds. Most strikingly, he divided the musical octave into a continuous set of regions which he colour-coded to show their effects on a listener. His work did not find its way into the mainstream of seventeenth-century mathematical studies of music, but when examined in its context it has the potential to shed light on that discipline, as well as being of considerable interest in its own right. Here, I focus on the anatomical and mathematical basis of Mengoli's work.
Musical logarithms in the seventeenth century: Descartes, Mercator, Newton