Reviews

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Professor H W Broer

© H W Broer

Notes

¹ In 1908 David Eugene Smith published Rara Arithmetica, and was the first to provide a list of arithmetic books and manuscripts that were used for mathematical instruction and printed in Europe before 1601. These were found in the Plimpton collection of manuscripts and books from mediaeval times to the early twentieth century at Columbia University. D E Smith worked at the Teachers College and was very active in promoting the use of history in mathematics education.

² The John Hersee Collection of Manuscript Exercise Books: handlist and short video presentation, University of Leicester Library. See http://www2.le.ac.uk/library/find/rarebooksandarchives/specialcollections/hersee There is a printed handlist available, but unfortunately none of these items have yet been digitized.

³ Two examples from the history website at St Andrews are: James Walker’s Fair Book of 1852 at http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/fair_book.html and Braid’s Handwritten Arithmetic book at http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/Braids_arithmetic.html.

⁴ A wider exploration of this theme can be found in John Denniss, ‘Learning arithmetic: textbooks and their users in England 1500–1900’ in E Robson and J Stedall (eds), The Oxford handbook of the history of mathematics (Oxford, 2009), pp 448–67.

⁵ No matter that I can no longer find the reference: the story also appears in the Introduction to the book as the inspiration for its writing.