During the Victorian era, industrial and economic growth led to a phenomenal rise in productivity and invention. That spirit of creativity and ingenuity was reflected in the massive expansion in scope and complexity of many scientific disciplines during this time, with subjects evolving rapidly and the creation of many new disciplines. The subject of mathematics was no exception and many of the advances made by mathematicians during the Victorian period are still familiar today; matrices, vectors, Boolean algebra, histograms, and standard deviation were just some of the innovations pioneered by these mathematicians. This book constitutes perhaps the first general survey of the mathematics of the Victorian period.…
"It’s very easy to write a very dry mathematics or computer-science book, but here the authors aren’t setting out lists of mathematical facts, but looking at who was doing and using mathematics, and why, in an approachable way that presents context as well as achievement. In the earlier part of the century British mathematical education and research was transformed by reformers like Augustus De Morgan and Charles Babbage, who brought in new ideas from France and Germany. Popularisers like Mary Somerville brought ideas to the public in an approachable way. Later in the century, James Clerk Maxwell brought a new mathematical approach to physics, and the mathematical analysis of data was put to practical use by pioneers like Charles Farr and Florence Nightingale. Questions of genius and brilliance are a bit of an ahistorical constriction, and often complicated by present or past expectations of gender. At the time science was not as compartmentalised, or as professionalised, as it is today. There was an emerging community of scientists, with fluid boundaries between work in chemistry, biology, geology, astronomy or mathematics , and between what would now be considered research, and more explanatory material, such as Mary Somerville’s translations. Only a few were making a living from science, for example employed at Greenwich Observatory, or in the small number of universities. There was a public enthusiasm for science, with organisations like the British Association and Royal Institution , providing lectures open to women as well as men, though universities, and learned societies like the Royal Society , remained all male affairs. Lovelace’s correspondents included the scientific elite of the day: Babbage, De Morgan, Faraday, Florence Nightingale, John and William Herschel, Mary Somerville, Wheatstone and Whewell. Yes, indeed. And as well as the suggestion she might have written Vestiges , it was seriously proposed that she be appointed as a kind of scientific advisor to Prince Albert."
