Table of Contents

List of illustrations; List of contributors; Foreword Stephen Hawking; Preface; Timeline of the Lucasian professorship; Introduction: 'Mind almost divine' Kevin C. Knox and Richard Noakes; 1. Isaac Barrow and the foundation of the Lucasian professorship Mordechai Feingold; 2. 'Very accomplished mathematician, philosopher, chemist': Newton as Lucasian professor Rob Iliffe; 3. Making Newton easy: William Whiston in Cambridge and London Stephen D. Snobelen and Larry Stewart; 4. Sensible Newtonians: Nicholas Saunderson and John Colson John Gascoigne; 5. The negative side of nothing: Edward Waring, Isaac Milner and Newtonian values Kevin C. Knox; 6. Paper and brass: the Lucasian professorship 1820–39 Simon Schaffer; 7. Arbiters of Victorian science: George Gabriel Stokes and Joshua King David B. Wilson; 8. 'That universal æthereal plenum': Joseph Larmor's natural history of physics Andrew Warwick; 9. Paul Dirac: the purest soul in an atomic age Helge Kragh; 10. Is the end in sight for the Lucasian chair? Stephen Hawking as Millennium Professor Hélène Mialet; Appendix. The statutes of the Lucasian professorship: a translation Ian Stewart; Index.

Promotional Information

A history of Cambridge University's Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics.

About the Author

Kevin Knox is Historian at the Institute Archives, Caltech. He has held positions as Visiting Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Ahmanson Postdoctoral Instructor in the Humanities at Caltech. Richard Noakes is a British Academy-Royal Society Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the History of Science, in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge University. He previously held a Leverhulme Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Universities of Leeds and Sheffield.

Reviews

'... a book that can be enjoyed by all interested in the history of science.' Scientific and Medical Network Review '... the volume is striking for both its narrative and its original research.' Nature '... a magnificent history of mathematics and physics ...' New Scientist 'By revealing failures and foibles rather than telling conventional stories of truth and triumph, this book provides a multifaceted view of the past that places human beings centre-stage in science's history ... these writers convincingly illustrate how even science's greatest heroes are idiosyncratic individuals enmeshed in a wide network of activists and interests ... surprised and fascinated by the intricate cultural tapestry woven here.' Notes of Records of the Royal Society