Mathematics Emerging: A Tribute to Jackie Stedall and her Influence on the History of Mathematics

Abstract

Dr Philip Beeley (University of Oxford) ‘To the publicke advancement’. John Collins and the promotion of mathematical knowledge in Restoration England Up to now the history of mathematics has considered the intelligencer and mathematical practitioner John Collins only tangentially and not as a figure in his own right. There have been no scholarly articles devoted to him, nor has his contribution to the development of the mathematical sciences in England in the second half of the seventeenth century been examined. It was to correct this historical oversight that Jackie Stedall and the speaker decided to undertake the task of producing the first complete edition of Collins’s letters and to preface this edition with a biographical essay illuminating the different sides of a man who made the promotion of ‘mathematick learning’ the focus of his life’s work. Revisiting some of the ‘high end’ projects with which Collins was most closely associated, including the publication of Pell’s Algebra, and his attempted publication of the Kinckhuysen translation, the talk will consider the success of his promotional efforts in the context of the Royal Society against the background of his broader aim of expanding mathematical knowledge into less elevated social milieus. Dr Rosanna Cretney (University of Oxford) ‘Nor any Number can confine us’: The mathematical art of changes in early modern