The Edinburgh Mathematical Laboratory and Edmund Taylor Whittaker's role in the early development of numerical analysis in Britain
type: Item
instance of: scholarly article
title: The Edinburgh Mathematical Laboratory and Edmund Taylor Whittaker's role in the early development of numerical analysis in Britain
zbMATH Open document ID: 1472.01027
author: Alison Maidment
published in: Historia Mathematica
publication date: 2021-07-15T00:00:00Z
full work available at URL: ETW and the Introduction of Numerical Analysis to GB.pdf
review text: The paper describes the origin and impact of the Edinburgh Mathematical Laboratory, founded by Edmund Taylor Whittaker at the University of Edinburgh in 1913. The lab was a place for training in numerical methods, including mathematical instruments such as slide rules, arithmometers, etc. The paper situates this founding in the wider history of university laboratories, pointing out that in 1913 they were still fairly new as a means for teaching the sciences and essentially unheard of as a means for teaching mathematics. The paper gives several sources of inspiration for Whittaker's founding of the lab: Carl Runge's programmatic 1912 lecture emphasizing the importance of practical training for mathematicians, the increasing importance of numerical methods in astronomy (one of Whittaker's passions) and insurance (where Whittaker had several friends), and the example of calculating rooms, which were popping up as appendices to physics labs. The paper goes on to describe some peculiarities of the lab, such as the gradual abandonment of graphical methods and the initial unwillingness to rely on calculating machines. It ends by describing how the Edinburgh mathematical lab, and other similar institutions, ultimately turned into computer labs and/or courses in numerical analysis.
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 01A73
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 01A60
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 65-03
zbMATH DE Number: 7371932
zbMATH Keywords: Edinburgh Mathematical Laboratory
zbMATH Keywords: numerical analysis
reviewed by: A. S. Blum
MaRDI profile type: Publication
OpenAlex ID: W3108329460
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DOI: 10.1016/J.HM.2020.09.002
description: scientific article; zbMATH DE number 7371932