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‘An Easy Commerce of the and the New.’*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2016

Bertha Jeffreys
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Extract

The Council has done me a great honour in making me your president, but has given me a difficult assignment in following our last president Professor Coulson, who achieved outstanding success in providing interest and stimulus for all of us. I played with the idea of the title “On not liking Mathematics” and there are indeed those who do not, but I felt that most of us here probably cannot remember a time when we did not like numbers and, moreover, my teaching life has been spent with those who have chosen Mathematics as their study at the University and this must mean that they like the subject at least better than others. A possible title would have been “Let ‘em be moderate as well as intelligent” which I found in a letter written in London by Sir Isaac Newton (1) (who represented the University of Cambridge in Parliament) on 30 April, 1689, to the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University concerning a Bill to settle ye Charters & Privileges of ye Universities: “And if at that distance you are from hence you cannot communicate your advice so easily as might be desired, you may perhaps do well to send up one or two intelligent persons (with such instructions as you shall see fit) for us to consult with here in drawing ye Bill. But if you send up anybody let ‘em be moderate as well as intelligent and let ‘em be sent as soon as may be”.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Mathematical Gazette , Volume 54 , Issue 389 , October 1970 , pp. 205 - 215
Copyright
Copyright © Mathematical Association 1970

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Footnotes

page 205 note *

Presidential Address to the Mathematical Association at the Annual General Meeting at Newcastle, April 2, 1970

References

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