Learning Geometry in Georgian England - Further Reading / About the Author

Further Reading

For more about everyday mathematics in Georgian England see Benjamin Wardhaugh, Poor Robin’s Prophecies: A curious Almanac, and the everyday mathematics of Georgian Britain (Oxford, 2012). A sister article to this one is about to appear in Plus Magazine; it will discuss how arithmetic was learned in Georgian England. (Editor's note: Learning Arithmetic in Georgian England has since appeared in Plus Magazine, an online publication of Cambridge University devoted to "living mathematics.")

Thomas Porcher’s and Robert Gardner’s copy-books are in a private collection; namely, mine! You may use my photographs of the copy-books in this article in your classroom, but please contact me, Benjamin Wardhaugh, for permission to use them for any other purpose.

The quotes from John Arbuthnot are from his Essay on the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning (Oxford, 1701). There’s a great little book about English mathematical schoolbooks: John Dennis, Figuring it out: children’s arithmetical manuscripts 1680–1880 (Huxley Scientific Press, 2012); and for America there’s also Nerida Ellerton and Ken Clements, Rewriting the history of school mathematics in North America 1607–1861 (Springer, 2012).

About the Author

Benjamin Wardhaugh lives in Oxford, England. He trained in mathematics, music and history, and has taught both science to historians and history to mathematicians. He is a Fellow of Wolfson College, where he studies and writes about history, particularly its mathematical parts.