Editorial

Images of mathematics and mathematicians

This issue of the Bulletin was inspired by a highly successful BSHM meeting on mathematics and fiction at Rewley House, Oxford, in May 2009. Tony Mann's ‘Partial account of the uses of mathematics in fiction’, Marilyn Gaull's ‘From Tristram Shandy to Bertrand Russell’, and David Bellos's ‘The adventure of the Oulipo’ were all delivered as talks on that occasion. Dramatic depictions of mathematicians were not included at the meeting, but are represented in this issue in Benjamin Wardhaugh's ‘Isaac Newton on stage’. Meanwhile, Alice Jenkins' ‘Mathematics and mental health in early modern England’, demonstrating that mathematics has been at times regarded as both cause and cure of mental instability, offers yet another perspective on perceptions of mathematics in the popular imagination. So do the two reviews in this issue.

In keeping with the same theme, but from a visual rather than literary point of view, Volker Remmert's 2009 Christmas lecture to the BSHM spoke about representations of the mathematical sciences in early modern frontispieces. A painting discussed in that lecture, of Urania the muse of astronomy winged by arithmetic and geometry, has been chosen for the cover of this special issue on images of mathematics and mathematicians.