Charles Cavendish (mathematician)

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Sir Charles Cavendish (* 1591 ; † 1654 ) was a British mathematician, member of parliament and patron of science.

Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire

Cavendish was the younger brother of William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle . According to the biography of John Aubrey , he had mathematical inclinations from youth and, thanks to the inheritance after the death of his father, was able to devote himself to the collection of mathematical works and patronage of mathematics. Nothing is known about a university education, he was probably brought up by private tutors. He was not very suitable for court service or the military, as he was small and, according to some reports, physically deformed. In 1612 he accompanied Henry Wotton with his brother and other young gentlemen on a diplomatic mission to Savoy, where he also visited Basel and Cologne. On August 10, 1619, when the king visited his brother's estate, Welbeck Abbey , he was knighted as a Knight Bachelor . Cavendish was Member of Parliament for Nottingham in 1623/24, 1627/28 and 1650 . He also had his own goods, but mostly lived with his brother in Welbeck Abbey or in his town house in London. In the English Civil War he fought on the side of the royalists at the side of his brother and distinguished himself at the Battle of Marston Moor . In 1644 he went abroad with his brother, first to Hamburg, then to Paris and The Hague. His property was confiscated, but he returned during Oliver Cromwell 's administration to conduct the restitution. He was unmarried.

According to John Aubrey, Cavendish acquired many mathematical manuscripts, especially in Italy and France, which he wanted to publish, but which were sold as raw paper after his death.

Cavendish and his brother patronized a circle of scientists on his brother's country estate (Welbeck Academy), including John Pell , Walter Warner , Robert Payne (who was also the chaplain of Cavendish's brother from 1630) and Thomas Hobbes . On the continent they had contact with René Descartes and Claude Mydorge , who they wanted to bring to England to live under the patronage of Charles I. Cavendish was also well known to Pierre Gassendi and William Oughtred . Oughtred may have been his math teacher. In exile in Paris and later in Antwerp the patronage of scientists continued, Pell, Hobbes and Kenelm Digby were among them, and there were contacts to Gilles de Roberval and Marin Mersenne , Christiaan Huygens , Descartes and others.

Cavendish corresponded with Pell, François Derand and Hobbes , among others . At the end of the 1630s he brought Bonaventura Cavalieri's principle of indivisibility to England and introduced William Oughtred to the ideas of François Viète (and encouraged Oughtred to publish his Clavis Mathematicae from 1631). Conversely, he introduced mathematicians on the continent to English colleagues such as Thomas Harriot.

His sister-in-law Margaret Lucas, the Duchess of Newcastle, dedicated a volume of poetry to him ( Poems and Fances , 1653). In exile she was a lady-in-waiting of Queen Henrietta Maria of France and a pupil of Cavendish.

literature

  • Noel Malcolm, Jacqueline Stedall (editors): John Pell (1611–1685) and His Correspondence with Sir Charles Cavendish: The Mental World of an Early Modern Mathematician, Oxford University Press 2004
  • J. Jacquot: Sir Charles Cavendish and his learned friends , Annals of Science, Volume 3, 1952, pp. 13-27, 175-191
  • HW Jones The circle of Welbeck , in J.-P. Schobinger (Ed.) Outline of the history of philosophy founded by Friedrich Ueberweg , philosophy of the 17th century. Volume 3: England , Part 1, Schwabe Verlag, Basel 1988, pp. 186-181
  • Sarah Hutton: Sir Charles Cavendish , in: A. Pyle (Ed.), Dictionary of Seventeenth Century British Philosophers , 2 volumes, London 2000
  • Edward Irving Carlyle: Cavendish, Charles. In: Sidney Lee (Ed.): Dictionary of National Biography . Supplement, Volume 1, Smith, Elder & Co., London 1901, pp. 399-400 ( Wikisource ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dictionary of National Biography, a date of birth around 1595 is also given, for example in the edition of the correspondence with Pell von Malcolm, Stedall, 2004, p. 86
  2. ↑ John Aubrey (Brief Lives): A little, weak, crooked man ... nature not having adapted him for the court or camp
  3. ^ William Arthur Shaw: The Knights of England. Volume 2, Sherratt and Hughes, London 1906, p. 173.
  4. ↑ Hobbes was employed by another branch of the Cavendishs, the Earl of Devonshire
  5. ↑ In 1631 he dedicated his Prodomi catoptricorum to him , in which he describes Cavendish as an extremely skilled mathematician and a close friend
  6. ↑ Malcolm, Stedall, p. 88
  7. ↑ Oughtred himself writes this in the preface
  8. ↑ John Wallis quotes a conversation between Cavendish and Roberval, in which Roberval draws attention to Harriot's algebra and its similarity to the representation given in Descartes' book of geometry. Stedall The Great Invention of Algebra , Oxford UP 2003, pp. 28f
personal data
SURNAME Cavendish, Charles
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British mathematician, politician and patron of science
DATE OF BIRTH 1591
DATE OF DEATH 1654