RiP 2021

Research in Progress is an annual meeting of the British Society for the History of Mathematics. It provides an opportunity for research students in any area of the history of mathematics to present their work to a friendly and supportive audience.

Edit: If you would like to get in touch with any of the speakers, the conference organisers are happy to mediate email communication. For the links and resources that were shared during the day over zoom, see the pdf at the bottom of the page. 

A link to the full programme (including abstracts) can be found at the bottom of this page. The pre-recorded talks will be available online 24 hours in advance to all registered participants, as well as being played via zoom on the day. Each session will conclude with a live Q&A. 

Online registration is now closed: if you would like to attend but have not yet registered, or if you have registered but didn't receive the zoom link in your email, please contact brigitte.stenhouse@open.ac.uk. 

All times in UTC.

09:15–09:30 SARAH HART, BSHM President: Welcome

09:30–10:30 CLEMENCY MONTELLE, University of Canterbury, New Zealand Invited lecture: An Ocean of Knowledge: Exploring the History of Mathematics in India

10:30–10:45 Break

10:45–12:15 

ALISON MAIDMENT, The Open University: ‘An unparalleled spring of knowledge’: Edmund Taylor Whittaker as a Historian of Science  

BRITTANY CARLSON, University of California, Riverside: Math Anxiety (Re)mediation Practices of the Nineteenth-Century Mathematician  

PAUL FELTON, The Open University: The Popularisation of Mathematics in Britain during the 19th Century  

NATASHA BAILIE, Queen’s University, Belfast, BSHM Undergraduate Essay Prizewinner: Quantifying the Unquantifiable: The Mathematicisation of Philosophy during the Scottish Enlightenment

12:15–13:30 Lunch break, Zoom break-out rooms to be available 12:45–13:15

13:30–15:00

BENJAMIN WILCK, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin: The Order of Definitions in Euclid’s Elements  

MEREDITH HOULTON, University of St Andrews: Navigating Euclid: A Table from William Sanders’ Elementa Geometriae  

ELENA SCALAMBRO, Università degli Studi di Torino: Gino Fano’s Contribution to the Classification of a Special Class of Threefolds

15:00–15:30 Break, Zoom break-out rooms to be available

15:30–17:00

DOMINGO MARTÍNEZ VERDÚ, Universidad de Murcia: Use of Infinity in the Calculation of Logarithms. The Analytical Procedures in Works by Benito Bails (1731–1797)  

ANUSHA BHATTACHARYA, Chennai Mathematical Institute, India: Generalized Theory of measures: An Attempt to Unite Contrasting Notions of Sizes  

KEVIN BAKER, University of Oxford:  Mathematics and Certainty

17:00–17:30 Break

17:30–18:30 History of Mathematics Quiz, hosted by Brigitte Stenhouse. (Participants will need to be able to view the zoom call, and have a separate tab or device where they can enter their quiz answers in real time, either by opening kahoot.it in a browser or downloading the Kahoot app. You will need to be able to see both screens or tabs at the same time.)