The Royal Military Academy

Abstract

APART from the universities and Gresham College, the Royal Military Academy is perhaps the oldest of our institutions, with a long line of notable mathematicians. Woolwich became a naval station as long ago as the time of Henry VIII, and in the reign of Charles II a military depot was established there. In 1741, two hundred years ago, the Academy was founded for the education of cadets, with the German mathematician, John Muller (1699-1784), as headmaster. Two years later, Thomas Simpson (1710-61), who had taught mathematics while working as a weaver in Spitalfields and had published a work on fluxions, was made the professor of mathematics, holding that position until his death. He was a fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the Academy of Sciences, Stockholm. Like Gregory, he edited the “Ladies' Diary”, as also did Charles Hutton (1737-1823), the self-taught Newcastle schoolmaster who was appointed to the mathematical chair in 1773. Hutton published many valuable works, and became Copley medallist and foreign secretary of the Royal Society. During the professorships of Hutton and Gregory the staff included for longer or shorter periods John Bonnycastle (1750?-1824), the Rev. Lewis Evans (1755-1827), and his son, Thomas Simpson Evans (1777-1818), and Peter Barlow (1776-1862), who from an obscure mercantile situation raised himself to the front rank of physical investigators. Since the days of these worthies of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Royal Military Academy has had among its professors of mathematics many distinguished men, including Samuel Hunter Christie and Sir George Greenhill.