Oxford's Savilian Professors of Geometry
The First 400 Years
Edited by Robin Wilson
Author Information
Edited by Robin Wilson, Emeritus Professor of Pure Mathematics, Open University and Emeritus Professor of Geometry, Gresham College, London
Robin Wilson is Emeritus Professor of Pure Mathematics at the Open University, and of Geometry at Gresham College, London, and is a former Fellow of Keble College, Univerity of Oxford, UK. A former President of the British Society for the History of Mathematics, he has written and edited around fifty books on mathematics and its history, including fifteen books for Oxford University Press. Involved with the popularization and communication of these subjects, he has received international awards for his 'outstanding expository writing' and for his outreach activities.
Contributors:
Philip Beeley is Research Fellow and Tutor in the Faculty of History and Fellow of Linacre College, Oxford. A former President of the British Society for the History of Mathematics, he is editor (with the late Christoph J. Scriba) of the multi-volume <i>Correspondence of John Wallis</i> (1616-1703), published by OUP. His main research interests are the history of calculus, mathematical correspondence networks in early-modern Europe, the history of scientific institutions (especially the Royal Society and the Leopoldina), and mathematical reading practices in the 17th century. He is co-editor of <i>Reading Mathematics in Early Modern Europe</i> (2021) and <i>Beyond the Academy: The Practice of Mathematics 1600-1850</i> (OUP).
Allan Chapman teaches at the University of Oxford, where he is a member of the Faculty of History and of Wadham College, and is a former Visiting Professor in the History of Science at Gresham College. His interests lie mainly in the history of astronomy, with particular emphasis on the development of astronomical instruments and observatories. An enthusiastic popularizer of his subject, he has written biographies of many scientists, including Robert Hooke and Mary Somerville.
Keith Hannabuss graduated and completed a doctorate in mathematics at the University of Oxford. A Fellow by Examination at Magdalen College, a Royal Society Visitor at the ETH in Zürich, and a Moore instructor at MIT, he returned to Balliol College as a Fellow and Tutor in Mathematics, teaching there for forty years until his retirement. His main research interest is in mathematical physics, and he is author of the text <i>Introduction to Quantum Theory</i> (OUP 1997), but he also has a longstanding interest in the history of mathematics, particularly of the 19th century.
Christopher Hollings is Departmental Lecturer in Mathematics and its History in the Oxford Mathematical Institute, and Clifford Norton Senior Research Fellow in the History of Mathematics at the Queen's College, Univerity of Oxford. His research covers a range of aspects of the history of mathematics in the 19th and 20th centuries, including the development of abstract algebra, the International Congresses of Mathematicians, and the modern historiography of ancient Egyptian mathematics.
Frances Kirwan is the current Savilian Professor of Geometry at the Univerity of Oxford. After studying mathematics at Clare College, Univerity of Cambridge, she moved to Oxford for her DPhil degree, supervised by Michael Atiyah. She was a Junior Fellow at Harvard University from 1983 to 1985 before returning to Oxford as a Fellow by Examination at Magdalen College. She became a Tutorial Fellow in Mathematics at Balliol College with a Lecturership (and from 1994 a Readership) at the University from 1986 to 2017, before being appointed to the Savilian Chair. A Fellow of the Royal Society, she served on its Council from 2012 to 2015, was President of the London Mathematical Society from 2003 to 2005, chaired the UK Mathematics Trust from 2010 to 2016, and was awarded a DBE in 2014.
Mark McCartney is Senior Lecturer in Mathematics at Ulster University and former President of the British Society for the History of Mathematics. His research in applied mathematics is centred around nonlinear dynamics, while his work in the history of mathematics and natural philosophy finds its focus in the 19th century. His most recent edited book (with Andrew Whitaker and Alastair Wood) is George <i>Gabriel Stokes: Life, Science and Faith</i> (OUP 2019).
Karen Hunger Parshall is Commonwealth Professor of History and Mathematics at the University of Virginia, USA, where she has served on the faculty since 1988. Her research has focused on the history of science and mathematics in the United States, the history of 19th- and 20th-century algebra, and the development of national mathematics research communities. A Guggenheim Fellow in 1996-97, an Inaugural Fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2012, and winner of its 2018 Albert Leon Whiteman Prize, she was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Zürich in 1994. Her book, <i>The American Mathematical Research Community, 1920-1950: “A New Era in the Development of Our Science”</i>, is forthcoming from Princeton University Press in 2022.
William Poole is Fellow and Tutor in English, Senior Tutor, and Fellow Librarian of New College, Oxford. He writes on intellectual, literary, and scientific history, and bibliography, and is co-editor of <i>The Library</i>. Recent books include <i>Milton and the Making of Paradise Lost</i> (2017), <i>John Fell's New Year Books</i> (2018), and <i>Thomas Hyde: Epistola de mensuris et ponderibus Serum seu Sinensium</i> (1688) (2021).
Benjamin Wardhaugh is a former Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and works on early modern mathematics. His interests include the mathematical music theories of the 17th century and the practices of mathematical reading and annotation. He is the author of several books about mathematics in the past, including (most recently) <i>The Book of Wonders</i>, a history of Euclid's Elements from antiquity to the present.
