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| Head of School | Bernd Schroers |
|---|---|
| Location | , |
| Affiliations | University of Edinburgh |
| Website | www |
The School of Mathematics is the mathematics department of the University of Edinburgh. The school is part of the university's College of Science and Engineering. [1]
The teaching of mathematics at Edinburgh been carried out since the formation of the university in 1583 and was part of the core teaching alongside logic, philosophy and natural philosophy. [1]
The chair in mathematics was formally established in 1674, and the first incumbent was James Gregory. Two of his nephews also held the chair as well as other major figures in mathematics, including Colin Maclaurin and Sir Edmund Whittaker with contributions ranging from pure mathematics to the mathematical underpinnings of physics and engineering. A number of the chairs in Mathematics during the period of the Scottish Enlightenment are notable for moving between mathematics and moral or natural philosophy, including Adam Ferguson, John Playfair, Dugald Stewart and Sir John Leslie. [2] It wasn’t until 1964 that a second chair of mathematics was established in the form of the Maclaurin Chair, which was followed by the chair of statistics in 1966 and the chair of applied mathematics in 1968. [2]
Organisationally, the department of mathematics sat within the Faculty of Arts until 1966 despite the creation of the Faculty of Science in 1893. [3] It joined the then Faculty of Science in 1966 at the same time as the creation of a separate Department of Statistics. The departments merged in 1991 [2] and the school took its current name in 2002.
The department has occupied many sites in its history, from facilities in the central campus at Old College, the Mathematical Institute on Chambers Street from 1914 and its current, primary location at King's Buildings in 1976. [2]
Since 2005 the school has maintained a formal research collaboration with Heriot-Watt University. The Maxwell Institute for Mathematical Sciences [4] has been the focus of joint submissions to recent Research Excellence Framework exercises.
Research in the school is grouped into several themes: [5]
Alumni and staff include many Fellows of the Royal Society and winners of the major mathematics prizes including the Fields Medal and the Copley Medal.
Colin Maclaurin was a Scottish mathematician who made important contributions to geometry and algebra. He is also known for being a child prodigy and holding the record for being the youngest professor. The Maclaurin series, a special case of the Taylor series, is named after him.
The Scottish Enlightenment was the period in 18th- and early-19th-century Scotland characterised by an outpouring of intellectual and scientific accomplishments. By the eighteenth century, Scotland had a network of parish schools in the Scottish Lowlands and five universities. The Enlightenment culture was based on close readings of new books, and intense discussions which took place daily at such intellectual gathering places in Edinburgh as The Select Society and, later, The Poker Club, as well as within Scotland's ancient universities.
Dugald Stewart was a Scottish philosopher and mathematician. Today regarded as one of the most important figures of the later Scottish Enlightenment, he was renowned as a populariser of the work of Francis Hutcheson and of Adam Smith. Trained in mathematics, medicine and philosophy, his lectures at the University of Edinburgh were widely disseminated by his many influential students. In 1783 he was a joint founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In most contemporary documents he is referred to as Prof Dougal Stewart.
Adam Ferguson,, also known as Ferguson of Raith, was a Scottish philosopher and historian of the Scottish Enlightenment.
John Playfair FRSE, FRS was a Church of Scotland minister, remembered as a scientist and mathematician, and a professor of natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. He is best known for his book Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth (1802), which summarised the work of James Hutton. It was through this book that Hutton's principle of uniformitarianism, later taken up by Charles Lyell, first reached a wide audience. Playfair's textbook Elements of Geometry made a brief expression of Euclid's parallel postulate known now as Playfair's axiom.
Thomas Brown was a Scottish physician, philosopher, and poet. Renowned as a physician for his structured thinking, diagnostic skills, and prodigious memory, Brown went on to hold the Chair of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh University from 1810 to 1820; where, "rather than pronouncing how he found things to be, [Brown] taught [his students] how to go about thinking about things."
Peter Guthrie Tait was a Scottish mathematical physicist and early pioneer in thermodynamics. He is best known for the mathematical physics textbook Treatise on Natural Philosophy, which he co-wrote with Lord Kelvin, and his early investigations into knot theory.
Matthew Stewart FRS FRSE (1717–1785) was a Scottish mathematician and minister of the Church of Scotland.
Thomas Chalmers, was a Scottish Presbyterian minister, professor of theology, political economist, and a leader of both the Church of Scotland and of the Free Church of Scotland. He has been called "Scotland's greatest nineteenth-century churchman".
Sir Edmund Taylor Whittaker was a British mathematician, physicist, and historian of science. Whittaker was a leading mathematical scholar of the early 20th century who contributed widely to applied mathematics and was renowned for his research in mathematical physics and numerical analysis, including the theory of special functions, along with his contributions to astronomy, celestial mechanics, the history of physics, and digital signal processing.
Sir John Leslie, FRSE KH was a Scottish mathematician and physicist best remembered for his research into heat.
The Dugald Stewart Monument is a memorial to the Scottish philosopher Dugald Stewart (1753–1828). It is situated on Calton Hill overlooking the city of Edinburgh and was designed by Scottish architect William Henry Playfair.
The Sir Robert Rede's Lecturer is an annual appointment to give a public lecture, the Sir Robert Rede's Lecture at the University of Cambridge. It is named for Sir Robert Rede, who was Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in the sixteenth century.
William Wallace LLD was a Scottish mathematician and astronomer who invented the eidograph.
The Canongate Kirkyard stands around Canongate Kirk on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, Scotland. The churchyard was used for burials from the late 1680s until the mid-20th century.
Dr Andrew Mackay FRSE LLD (1760–1809) was a Scottish mathematician and astronomer, known as a teacher of navigation.
Thomas MacKnight FRSE FSA MWS (1762–1836) was a Scottish minister based in Edinburgh who was Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1820. He is also remembered as a gifted physicist, mathematician and geologist.
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