12th November 2013, 6:00pm
A Chance Encounter, Richard Simpson (Council Secretary to the British Society for the History of Mathematics)
Joint BSHM and IMA Meeting
Abstract
This talk will focus on aspects of 17th century mathematics history. The discovery of a primitive for Sec(x) – this arose from a chance comparison of logarithm tables produced for cartography and navigation – will form a ‘leitmotiv’ for lives and achievements of some mathematical practitioners of the time. Principally these are John Napier, Edward Wright and Henry Bond – but we shall touch on some others. We shall also need an elementary discussion of ‘Mercator’s projection’ and some ‘school level’ calculus. The chance discovery pre-dates, by some years, the introduction of calculus by Newton and Leibniz and was originally expressed as a ‘conjecture’. The search for a ‘proof’ has been described as one the most important ‘open problems’ of the mid-17th century. The subject is apposite because 2014 is the 400th anniversary of Napier’s founding publication on ‘logarithms’.
Richard Simpson trained and practised as an engineer for 35 years before becoming a teacher at King Edwards School, Birmingham, where he taught Mathematics for 14 years. Now retired, he devotes time to promoting the subject of the History of Mathematics as an academic study in itself – and the use of historical background to enhance mathematics teaching and understanding.
Venue: Room E32, John Dalton Building, Oxford Road, Manchester Metropolitan University
No charge is made to attend meetings and non-members are welcome.
