Oxford mathematics at a low ebb? An 1855 dispute over examination results

Abstract

ABSTRACTBetween December 1855 and March 1856, a public dispute raged, in British national newspapers and locally published pamphlets, between two teachers at the University of Oxford: the mathematical lecturer Francis Ashpitel and Bartholomew Price, the professor of natural philosophy. The starting point for these exchanges was the particularly poor results that had come out of the final mathematics examinations in Oxford that December. Ashpitel, as one of the examiners, stood accused of setting questions that were too difficult for the ordinary student, with the consequence that, in Price’s view, further mathematical study in Oxford – never as robust as in Cambridge – would be discouraged. We examine this short-lived affair, and use it not only to gain insight into the status of mathematical study in Oxford in the mid-nineteenth century, but also to point towards the increasing importance of competitive examinations in British public life at that time.