Isaac Todhunter

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Isaac Todhunter

Isaac Todhunter (born November 23, 1820 in Rye , Sussex , † March 1, 1884 in Cambridge ) was a British mathematician and mathematician.

Todhunter was the son of a pastor and went to school in Hastings , where his mother founded a girls' school after his father's death in 1826. While he was also teaching in Peckham , he attended evening classes at University College in London with Augustus de Morgan, among others . In 1842, on a scholarship he won, he received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of London (where he studied with de Morgan and James Joseph Sylvester ) and his master's degree in 1844 (being the first to win a prize in the exams ) while he was also a math teacher at Wimbledon . In 1844 he began his studies at St. John's College , Cambridge , where he was Senior Wrangler in the Tripos exams in 1848, won the Smith Prize in 1848 and the Burney Prize. In 1849 he was elected a Fellow and became a lecturer and private tutor at the university. His students included Peter Guthrie Tait and Edward Routh (who later became a famous private tutor for the Tripos exams). In 1862 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society (and from 1874 in its Council ) and in 1865 he was a founding member of the London Mathematical Society with de Morgan . After he married in 1864, he had to give up his fellowship, but in 1874 he became an honorary fellow of St. John's College. In 1880 his eyesight waned and he was partially paralyzed.

Todhunter wrote numerous textbooks and stories on the calculus of probability, the calculus of variations, elasticity theory, and potential theory. In addition to Latin and Greek, he spoke several modern languages ​​(French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian), Hebrew and Sanskrit. He defended the use of Euclid as a central subject in mathematics. In 1874 he received the Adams Prize for his studies on calculus of variations.

Fonts

  • Treatise on the Differential Calculus and the Elements of the Integral Calculus (1852, 6th edition, 1873)
  • Treatise on Analytical Statics (1853, 4th edition. 1874)
  • Treatise on the Integral Calculus (1857, 4th edition. 1874)
  • Treatise on Algebra (1858, 6th edition, 1871)
  • Treatise on Plane Coordinate Geometry (1858, 3rd edition. 1861)
  • Analytic Statics (1853)
  • Plane Trigonometry (1859, 4th edition, 1869)
  • Spherical Trigonometry (1859)
  • History of the Calculus of Variations (1861)
  • Euclid 1862
  • Theory of Equations (1861, 2nd ed. 1875)
  • Examples of Analytical Geometry of Three Dimensions (1858, 3rd edition, 1873)
  • Mechanics (1867)
  • Scaling (1869)
  • History of the Mathematical Theory of Probability from the Time of Pascal to that of Lagrange (1865), Archive
  • Researches in the Calculus of Variations (1871)
  • History of the Mathematical Theories of Attraction and Figure of the Earth from Newton to Laplace (1873)
  • Elementary Treatise on Laplace's, Lame's and Bessel's Functions (1875)
  • Natural Philosophy for Beginners (1877).
  • The History of the Theory of Elasticity , 1886 (unfinished, edited by Karl Pearson ).
  • William Whewell , 1876

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personal data
SURNAME Todhunter, Isaac
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British mathematician and mathematician historian
DATE OF BIRTH November 23, 1820
PLACE OF BIRTH Rye (East Sussex)
DATE OF DEATH March 1, 1884
Place of death Cambridge