Arthur Cayley as Sadleirian professor: A glimpse of mathematics teaching at 19th-century Cambridge
type: Item
instance of: scholarly article
title: Arthur Cayley as Sadleirian professor: A glimpse of mathematics teaching at 19th-century Cambridge
zbMATH Open document ID: 0944.01004
author: Tony Crilly
published in: Historia Mathematica
publication date: 2000-09-18T00:00:00Z
review text: Main part of the article is the hitherto unpublished inaugural lecture given by Arthur Cayley (1821-1895) on the occasion of obtaining the Sadleirian Chair of pure mathematics on 3 November 1863. Concentrating attention in the period 1638-1750, Cayley explained the prevalent basic notions of analytic geometry including the geometric interpretation of complex numbers, the theory of pole and polar, points and lines at infinity, plane curves, the projective definition of distance, Pascal and Maclaurin theorems. Apart from commentaries on the lecture itself, the article offers a good ``glimpse'' of mathematical education at Cambridge in the times when all turned around the mathematical tripos and the new impetus for research only began to be recognized. Well documented, it is a good reading.
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 01A55
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 01A70
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 01A73
zbMATH DE Number: 1330816
zbMATH Keywords: Sadleirian chair of pure mathematics
zbMATH Keywords: geometry
zbMATH Keywords: English university education
reviewed by: Roman Duda
MaRDI profile type: Publication
full work available at URL: hmat.1999.2233
OpenAlex ID: W2084204094
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DOI: 10.1006/HMAT.1999.2233
description: scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1330816