A locus classicus in the historiography of (early) 19th century mathematics is that of the divide between French and English practices and conceptions of that science -- a divide often framed in terms of foundational approaches, and pedagogical practices, and cultural matrices. A closer look at this historiography, however, reveals that it draws on a rather narrow conception of its subject: be...
The historiographical notion of a "supposed decline of 'British mathematics' after the death of Isaac Newton" has been "thoroughly nuanced, if not outright debunked", as Brigitte Stenhouse and Nicolas Michel write in the seminar prospectus. At present, we can read several historical accounts of the development of 18th-century calculus and algebra, and even accounts in which not only "pure"...
As a woman in late eighteenth- to early nineteenth-century Britain, Mary Somerville was almost unique in cultivating for herself a reputation as an expert mathematician. Much of this reputation relied upon recognition of her studies of mathematics recently developed in Paris, especially the work of Pierre-Simon Laplace in physical astronomy. Indeed in 1827, the President of the Society for the...
This paper examines the circulation of descriptive geometry - a mathematical theory formalizing projection techniques for the flat drawing of three-dimensional objects - in carriage woodworkers and makers’ drawing practices at the end of the 19th century. The use of descriptive geometry in this professional milieu was first documented in France; the mathematical theory then circulated in...
