Carroll Lewis - Lewis Carroll in numberland: his fantastical mathematical logical life: an agony in eight fits

Charles Dodgson is best known for his Alice books, Alices Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass , written under his pen-name of Lewis Carroll. These books have delighted children and adults for generations and have never been out of print.

If Dodgson had not written the Alice books, he would be remembered mainly as a pioneering photographer, one of the first to consider photography as an art rather than as simply a means of recording images. In particular, his imaginatively posed photographs of children are a delight, and his hundreds of photographs of friends and celebrities provide us with much insight into the Victorian world around him.

If Dodgson had not written the Alice books or been a photographer, he might be remembered as a mathematician, the career he pursued as a lecturer at Christ Church, the largest college of Oxford University. But what mathematics did he do? How good a mathematician was he, and how influential was his work?

In this book, written for a general readership, I try to answer these questions. In particular, I describe his work in geometry, algebra, logic and the mathematics of voting, in the context of his other activities, and on the lighter side I present some of the puzzles and paradoxes with which he delighted in entertaining his child-friends and contemporaries. Much work has been done on his contributions to all these areas; my aim here is to make this material accessible to a wider readership.

I am grateful to many people who have helped me with the preparation of this book. When I first became interested in Charles Dodgson I received much help and encouragement from Francine Abeles, who has edited the mathematical and political pamphlets of Charles Dodgson (see the Notes and References) and who has sent me much useful material on algebra, voting, ciphers, logic, and other topics.

Later I was privileged to get to know Edward Wakeling, who edited Dodgsons Oxford pamphlets, produced two popular books of Dodgsons puzzles, and has undertaken the Herculean task of editing the Dodgson diaries in ten volumesa work of great scholarship and an invaluable source for anyone interested in the facts, rather than the myths, of Dodgsons life. I am particularly grateful to him for allowing me access to his magnificent archive of Carrolliana and for freely giving his time to introduce me to much material with which I was unfamiliar, for providing me with a great deal of useful information, and for correcting many errors in my manuscript.

Finally, I wish to thank Mark Richards, President of the Lewis Carroll Society, and Amirouche Moktefi for their help with several sections of this book. I should also like to thank John Woodruff for his careful editing.

Robin Wilson

Oxford, April 2008

This is not a full chronology of Charles Dodgsons life, but contains the milestones and his most important mathematical (and other) publications. Several titles are abbreviated.