Eva GR Taylor

Eva Germaine Rimington Taylor (born June 22, 1879 in Highgate , London , † July 5, 1966 in Wokingham , England ) was a British historian of science and geographer. She was the first woman professor of geography in England.

Life

Taylor studied chemistry at the University of London ( Bachelor in 1903) and then studied further at Oxford, while she was a chemistry teacher on the side. She was research assistant to geographer AJ Herbertson at Oxford from 1908 to 1910, wrote geography textbooks for schools (with JF Unstead) and taught at the Clapham Training College for Teachers, the Froebel Institute, East London College (later Queen Mary and Westfield College ) and Birkbeck College . In 1929 she received a doctorate (D. Sc.) In geography from the University of London and was Professor of Geography at Birkbeck College, University of London from 1930, where she retired in 1944.

Act

Taylor wrote essays and books on the history of geography (often in the Hakluyt Society , on whose council she was), books on the history of navigation up to James Cook ( The Haven Finding Art ) and the history of "applied mathematics" in early modern England and the 18th century, with numerous short biographies of "marginal figures" in the history of mathematics, which until then had been little researched and paid attention to. In total they bring short biographies of around 2500 people.

In the 1960s, she was one of the first to show that Yale University's so-called Vinland card is probably a fake.

She was Honorary Vice President of the Society of Nautical Research. A lecture series of the Royal Geographical Society , Hakluyt Society and Society of Nautical Research is named after her ("Eva GR Taylor Annual Lecture").

Eva Taylor never married, but had three sons. At times she was in a relationship with Herbert Dunhill (from the tobacco and pipe company).

Fonts

• Tudor Geography, 1485-1583. London: Methuen, 1930.
• Late Tudor and Early Stuart Geography, 1583-1650. London: Methuen 1934.
• The Haven Finding Art: a history of navigation from Odysseus to Captain Cook. London: Hollis and Carter, 1956.
• The mathematical practitioners of Tudor and Stuart England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954 [period 1420 to 1715].
• The mathematical practitioners of Hanoverian England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966 [period 1714-1840].
• with Michael Richey : The geometrical Seaman: a book of early nautical instruments . London: Hollis and Carter, 1962.

literature

• GR Crone: Obituary . In: The Geographical Journal Vol. 132, 1966, pp. 594-596.
• Peter DeClercq: A Chronicle of Lesser Men: EGRTaylor and her mathematical practitioners of England . In: Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society Vol. 81, 2004, p. 31.
• Peter Wallis: An appraisal of Taylor's Mathematical practitioners . In: Journal of the Institute of Navigation Vol. 20, 1967, p. 200.

Web links

• Peter de Clercq: The Life and Work of EGR Taylor (1879-1966) . In: The Journal of the Hakluyt Society February 2007.

References

1. ↑ Your book has been criticized in some details and has since been partially overtaken by the work of Peter and Ruth Wallis ( Index of British Mathematicians. 3 parts. Newcastle-upon-Tyne 1967, 1986, 1993 [for the 18th century]), G . Clifton ( Directory of British Scientific Instrument Makers 1550–1851. 1995), Sarah Bendall ( Dictionary of Land-Surveyors and local map makers in Great Britain and Ireland 1530-1850. 2 volumes. London 1997)
2. ↑ Lesley B. Cormack, Steven A. Walton, John A. Schuster (eds.), Mathematical practitioners and the transformation of natural knowledge in early modern europe, Springer 2017, p. 3
3. ↑ Unpublished. Sunday Times, March 6, 1966, p. 13; Michael Richey: EGRTaylor and the Vinland Map. In: The Journal of Navigation Vol. 53 (2), 2000, pp. 193-205, doi : 10.1017 / S0373463300008754 .