Robert Woodhouse and the Evolution of Cambridge Mathematics

Abstract

Robert Woodhouse’s lifetime, 1773–1827, is often characterized as the nadir of British mathematics. In that view, the country of Newton was clinging desperately to his coat-tails whilst Continental mathematicians forged on with novel and important work in mathematics and the physical sciences. Although Woodhouse briefl y held the Lucasian Chair, the esteemed position of Newton at Cambridge, his work sought to introduce Continental mathematics to the university and reduce the blind allegiance to her most famous alumnus. Men prior to Woodhouse, such as Edward Waring and John Landen, had introduced analytical methods to England, but Woodhouse was the fi rst to do so with an eye to incorporating them into the Cambridge curriculum. By the time of Woodhouse’s death, undergraduates did learn differential notation, and analytical developments on the Continent were increasingly disseminated and incorporated into the sciences, albeit in a diluted form. Nonetheless, undergraduate studies at Cambridge remained focused on the training of students for religious and gentlemanly positions, discouraging original research. In this regard, Woodhouse was situated in a transitory period and his career is comprehensible only in light of the tensions between reform and continuity within British mathematics. In addition to holding the Lucasian Chair from 1820 to 1822, Woodhouse was the Plumian Professor from 1822 to 1827 and the fi rst director of the Cambridge Observatory when it opened in 1824. Nevertheless, he was isolated from many of the main mathematical fi gures of his time at Cambridge. Overshadowed early in his career by Samuel Vince and John Wood, and later by William Whewell, George Peacock and George Airy, Woodhouse was never fully established within one community. This seclusion was exacerbated by the isolation of Cambridge University itself at the turn of the nineteenth century. It was a collection of relatively insular colleges, whose leaders had been promoted almost exclusively from within. Furthermore, the mathematical curriculum was overwhelmingly conservative, emphasizing memorization and examination over original research, and maintaining a complacent attitude toward foreign developments. Paradoxically, the historiography has focused disproportionately on novel mathematical investigation in this era, despite this being an almost non-existent part of the Cambridge system. Professors, including Woodhouse for the majority of his career, were more concerned with the teaching and training of students than with the development of their fi eld. Nonetheless, historians have primarily examined work in analysis and algebra done by a small number of mathematically-gifted students which would serve as the basis for developments throughout the century. Because