The Mathematics of Great Amateurs

Abstract

WHEN in my younger days I wrote some papers on celestial mechanics, and was thus brought into the circle of the astronomers, I could not help noticing the difference in type between them and the mathematicians, to whose company I properly belonged. There were few professional astronomers, and the great majority of the fellows of the Royal Astronomical Society were amateurs ; indeed, many of the most important advances in astronomy—the discovery of Uranus by Herschel, the discovery of spiral nebulæ by Lord Rosse, and the creation of stellar spectroscopy by Huggins—had been made by men who held no astronomical appointment. Many of my new friends were men who had inherited or acquired considerable wealth, and had built observatories in the grounds of their mansions ; they were most sociable and hospitable, and celebrated the meeting of the Society every month by an excellent and expensive Club dinner. The mathematicians, on the other hand, were practically all professionals ; and there were no mathematical dinners, partly because the mathematicians were too poor, and partly because the mathematician, like the poet, depends on individual inspiration, and so has no urge to associate with his fellows.

The Mathematics of Great Amateurs

By Prof. Julian Lowel Coolidge. Pp. viii + 212. (Oxford: Clarendor Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1949.) 21s. net.