Isaac Todhunter

Isaac Todhunter (* November 23, 1820 in Rye, Sussex, † March 1, 1884 in Cambridge ) was a British mathematician and historian of mathematics.

Todhunter was the son of a minister and went to school in Hastings, where his mother founded a girls' school after the death of her husband in 1826. While teaching in Peckham at the same time, he attended evening classes at University College, London, among others, Augustus de Morgan. In 1842 he went on a scholarship, which he won, his bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of London ( where he studied with de Morgan and James Joseph Sylvester ) and 1844 his master's degree (where he won first in the exams a price ), while he was also a mathematics teacher at Wimbledon. In 1844 he began his studies at St. John 's College, Cambridge, where he was Senior Wrangler at the 1848 Tripos examinations in 1848 won the Smith Prize and the Burney Prize. In 1849 he was elected Fellow and was a lecturer and private tutor at the University. Among others were Peter Guthrie Tait and Edward Routh ( himself later a famous private tutor for the Tripos exams) his students. In 1862 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society ( and from 1874 in the Council) and 1865 he was with de Morgan founding member of the London Mathematical Society. After he married in 1864, he had to give up his Fellowship, but in 1874 became Honorary Fellow of St. John 's College. 1880 waned his sight, and he was partially paralyzed.

Todhunter wrote numerous textbooks and stories of probability theory, calculus of variations, the theory of elasticity and potential theory. He said in addition to Latin and Greek more modern languages ​​(French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian ), Hebrew and Sanskrit. He defended the use of Euclid as a central subject matter in mathematics. For his researches on the calculus of variations, he received in 1874 the Adams Prize.

Writings

  • Treatise on the Differential Calculus and the Elements of the Integral Calculus (1852, 6th edition, 1873)
  • Treatise on Analytical Statics (1853, 4th edition. , 1874)
  • Treatise on the Integral Calculus (1857, 4th edition. , 1874)
  • Treatise on Algebra ( 1858.6. Edition, 1871)
  • Analytic Statics (1853 )
  • Spherical Trigonometry (1859 )
  • History of the Calculus of Variations ( 1861)
  • Euclid 1862
  • Theory of Equations (1861, 2nd ed 1875)
  • Examples of Analytical Geometry of Three Dimensions (1858, 3rd edition, 1873)
  • Mechanics (1867 )
  • Mensuration (1869 )
  • History of the Mathematical Theory of Probability from the Time of Pascal to did of Lagrange (1865 ), archives
  • Researches in the Calculus of Variations ( 1871)
  • History of the Mathematical Theories of Attraction and Figure of the Earth from Newton to Laplace (1873 )
  • Elementary Treatise on Laplace 's, Lame 's and Bessel 's Functions ( 1875)
  • Natural Philosophy for Beginners (1877 ).
  • The History of the Theory of Elasticity, 1886 (unfinished, published by Karl Pearson ).
  • William Whewell, 1876
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