Talking History of Mathematics. Long Ago Division: How to read historical maths historically
We are excited to present ‘Talking History of Maths’. Supported by the British Society for the History of Mathematics, this will be a set of five talks and discussions over the 2026/27 academic year. It is aimed at undergraduate mathematics or joint honours students, but anyone is welcome to take part.
Each of the five sessions will take place over 90 minutes, consisting of an hour talk followed by a 30-minute discussion. They will be presented live at one university with other groups ‘Zooming in’ to watch. Our second session will take place at 2pm BST on Wednesday 11th November 2026 (speaker, title, and abstract below).
There are two ways to take part:
1. As an individual: You will join by yourself on Zoom and then are welcome to join our discussion over Zoom for the last 30 minutes.
2. As a group: We are imagining this will be university maths societies, but any group is welcome to sign up. You will book out a room and watch the talk together and then discuss it as a group.
To join the mailing list for these talks, please fill in this form: Talking History of Maths Registration – Fill in form.
Long Ago Division: How to read historical maths historically, Dr. Michael Barany (University of Edinburgh)
Taking a close look at how long division was presented in the first widely-used English-language arithmetic textbook, we will discuss what it means to read historical mathematics historically. The Ground of Arts (1543) contained milestone expositions of what would become many standard set-pieces of basic mathematical education in the centuries to come, but beneath these familiar techniques there are important historical differences and lessons for us to examine. Considerations will include how to relate historical contexts to the mathematical text, how to identify and interpret information about authorship and audiences, how to use our technical knowledge of mathematics to understand past techniques, and how to identify where and how past assumptions and understandings differ from our own. The hands-on and interactive session will also involve grappling with the mundane but often difficult and significant details of reading very old texts: what letter is that? is that a misprint? what page are we on? We will detect a potential reference to a very old fart joke, which we will attempt to explain.
Future dates and lecture titles forthcoming.
If you have any questions, please send them to elinor[dot]flavell[at]open[dot]ac[dot]uk.