For the Recorde

Gareth Ffowc Roberts

Description

This book celebrates the life and work of twelve mathematicians who were either born in Wales or who worked in Wales. When the Welsh national anthem was composed in 1856, Wales was at the centre of the industrial revolution, the country was transformed by engineering and technology, and scientific societies flourished across the length and breadth of the land. By 1859, Charles Darwin had published his On the Origin of Species, and one of its outcomes in Wales was a growing tension between religion and science, which influenced peoples’ perceptions of their Welshness. By the end of the nineteenth century, that perception had narrowed to include its poetry, music, religion and little else. Following the popularity of his book Count Us In, the author adopts a similar style inviting us to take pride in our mathematicians and demonstrating how the tide has turned.

Acknowledgements
Preface
Map of Wales
Think of a number
From Môn across the Menai
How I wish I could calculate pi
Chance and circumstance
Building bridges
A giant among pygmies
What is the title of this chapter?
Mathematics for the million
Whence then cometh wisdom?
Clearing the bottleneck
Precise imprecision
Go for gold
In conclusion
Answers to puzzles
Notes on chapters
Index

Sujets

• Sciences formelles
• Histoire des mathématiques
• Essays
• Sciences et techniques
• Mathematics
• Wales

Informations

• Publié par: University of Wales Press
• Date de parution: 15 septembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786839183
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

FOR THE RECORDE

Gareth Ffowc Roberts, 2022
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Applications for the copyright owner s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to The University of Wales Press, University Registry, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3NS
www.uwp.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-78683916-9
e-ISBN 978-1-78683-918-3
The right of Gareth Ffowc Roberts to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Dedicated to the memory of Llewelyn Gwyn Chambers (1924-2014), a pioneer in the history of Wales s mathematicians.

Were you to ask people to name Wales s celebrities, the chances are that most would include poets, writers, singers and others in the arts world, past and present. Were you to ask the same people to name Welsh mathematicians, their responses are unlikely to be so instant and assured. (trans.)
Ll. G. Chambers
Mathemategwyr Cymru (Cardiff, 1994)
To my grandchildren, Elis, Gwydion, Mari, Miriam and Olwen
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Preface
Map of Wales

1 Think of a number
2 From M n across the Menai
3 How I wish I could calculate pi
4 Chance and circumstance
5 Building bridges
6 A giant among pygmies
7 What is the title of this chapter?
8 Mathematics for the million
9 Whence then cometh wisdom?
10 Clearing the bottleneck
11 Precise imprecision
12 Go for gold
Conclusion
Answers to puzzles
Notes on chapters
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I nspired by years of working with others and sharing ideas, I have been fortunate in being able to profit from the enthusiasm of teachers and their pupils, and the experience of lecturers and their students. I am particularly indebted to WALMATO (the Welsh Association of Lecturers in Mathematics in the Area Training Organisation), a remarkable society of specialists in mathematics education in Wales, for its generous support.
I am grateful to the anonymous independent reader for a raft of insightful comments and positive encouragement. Staff at the University of Wales Press were unstinting in their support throughout the process.
It can be a salutary experience to subject oneself to criticism from one s own family, particularly its younger members. The Welsh adage, Yr hen a w yr a r ifanc a dybia (literally, the old know, the young only think they know ), is comforting but misleading; better to develop a thick skin and plenty of humility to accept their advice and to recognise that they re absolutely spot on.
Any errors in the book are attributable to just one person, the author himself.
PREFACE
T his book is a celebration of the life and work of a selection of mathematicians born in Wales and others who worked in Wales, enriching our history and culture.
When Evan James and his son, James James, composed our national anthem in Pontypridd in 1856, Wales was in the middle of the industrial revolution. Developments in science and technology were setting the pace, and scientific societies were sprouting like mushrooms the length and breadth of the country. Did Evan James miss a golden opportunity to recognise this when he penned the words of the anthem, celebrating our poets and our singers but overlooking our scientists and our engineers?
By 1859, three years later, Charles Darwin had published his On the Origin of Species and there are few today who associate the theory of evolution with the Welshman, Alfred Russel Wallace, who developed his ideas before Darwin. One of the side effects of these new ideas was to create tensions between religion and science, so influencing people s perceptions of the nature of their Welshness. By the end of the century that perception had narrowed to include our poetry, our music, our religion and little else.
By now, 150 years later, perceptions have shifted markedly; although it can be argued that the tendency to limit Wales to being the land of song still lurks in the nation s subconscious, arguably bolstered by definitions of Welshness hoisted upon us by our neighbours. The shift is most marked in the younger generations who embrace science and technology as a natural part of our culture, encouraged by developments to normalise the use of Welsh as well as English to articulate and develop scientific ideas at school and in both further and higher education.
The last line of the anthem O bydded i r hen iaith barhau expresses the wish that the Welsh language should endure. It has every opportunity of doing so provided it embraces Welsh culture in its totality: the sciences as well as the arts.

If the Welsh Government is to succeed in reaching its target of a million Welsh speakers by 2050, all aspects of Welsh culture need to be included. A concerted effort is also needed by our schools and colleges, our central and local governments, our national institutions and our mass media.
Loose talk can undo in an instant the influence of years of education. Driving by car to reach the National Eisteddfod, I was also listening to live commentary on Radio Cymru describing events onstage. At the end of one of the singing competitions for school children, a Radio Cymru correspondent asked the competitors backstage about their interests other than singing. Well , replied one of the children eagerly, I enjoy maths, physics and chess. Fantastic! The interviewer responded positively, Well done, that s very interesting . On transferring back to the Radio Cymru studio, however, the correspondent there said, I never thought that I d ever hear the words enjoy and maths together in the same sentence.
I came close to driving the car through a hedge!

Social media also has a strong influence. In 2012 I began to set short mathematical puzzles on Twitter to gauge the response. Under the hashtags posydydd and puzzleoftheday, the puzzles are tweeted in both Welsh and English early each weekday morning, the Friday puzzles being aimed primarily at children. No high-level technical knowledge is needed to solve them - it s surprising what can be done simply using what you can remember of primary school maths. You do, however, need to be able to think outside the box from time to time, and a desire to rise to the challenge, linked with a streak of stubbornness, can help. By now, writing these words in 2021, the puzzles have more than 2,000 followers, most of whom follow the Welsh version (I get the impression that having the English version alongside also assists those who may be less familiar with some of the Welsh terms: spotting that rhif cysefin is the Welsh for prime number , for example). But those who only follow the English version include some very welcome but unexpected tweeters: a university administrator in New Zealand; a group of friends in south India who translate some of the puzzles into Tamil; and, teachers in Canada.
So, who are the followers and what attracts them? As the audience is in a constant state of flux it is difficult to be definitive, but some patterns are clear. There are primary and secondary schools among them that provide illuminating glimpses into the ways in which they make creative use of the puzzles in the classroom. Excluding schools and organisations it is also possible to get a feel for the gender mix of the other followers. What would you expect? Roughly the same number of both sexes? More men? More women? Take a second to decide on your expectation before reading on.
In my experience of posing this question to various audiences, I ve noticed that men tend to expect that they are in the majority, and women tend to expect that they are in the majority, with no shortage of reasons given to back up both views: that men are innately better at maths than women (provoking howls of protest by all the women present); that women tend to use social media more than men anyway (an assertion supported by research that suggests roughly a 52:48 split in favour of women using Twitter); and that women are far too busy at 7.30 a.m., getting children ready for school, to be doing some maths. There s no shortage of arguments for and against, and we can but surmise what other sociological factors hold sway in the background.
Occasional flashes of insight can be revealing. After I had addressed a conference for women in Swansea, a middle-aged woman introduced herself to me as a follower of posydydd . I learned that she ran a small business in the city and that she enjoyed having something to wake her up early each morning - akin to an injection of caffeine to get her mind in gear. She never tweets her answer to the puzzle, preferring to keep it to herself. She enjoys the privacy of the puzzle, the fact that there is no one looking over her shoulder, no one putting pressure on her to get an answer, no one saying Come on, hurry up! What s the matter with you? . Her final comment was sobering, It s so different to what I experienced at school .
Are there any lessons to be learned from the story, for teachers, parents or grandparents? I had better reveal by now that there are more women than men among the followers of puzzleoftheday. The difference isn t huge - about 55 per cent women to 45 per cent men - but it s significant.

What were my criteria for choosing those mathematicians from history whose lives and work are explored in this book? Would they, in fact, all have described themselves as mathematicians? Labels such as mathematician and scientist are comparatively modern and have developed as scholars