Benjamin Wardhaugh - The Book of Wonders: The Many Lives of Euclid’s Elements

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Poor Robins Prophecies: A Curious Almanac, and the Everyday Mathematics of Georgian Britain

A Wealth of Numbers: An Anthology of 500 Years of Popular Mathematics Writing

Gunpowder & Geometry: The Life of Charles Hutton, Pit Boy, Mathematician and Scientific Rebel

Benjamin Wardhaugh lives and works in Oxford. His research focuses on the history of numeracy and mathematics, and the ways mathematics influences and is a part of cultures. His work is mainly on topics in early modern Britain, including mathematical music theory in that period. He has taught in both the Mathematical Institute and the History Faculty at Oxford University. He is the author of several histories, including Gunpowder and Geometry.

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2020

Copyright Benjamin Wardhaugh 2020

Cover images: God, the Divine Architect Bridgeman Images; The Friday Mosque Gerard Degeorge / Bridgeman Images

Benjamin Wardhaugh asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780008299903

Ebook Edition August 2020 ISBN: 9780008299927

Version: 2020-07-10

For my parents

It is a pleasure to acknowledge the help of those who contributed to the long process that brought this book from idea to realisation. Victoria Kwee and Caroline Davidson contributed many hours and many ideas to the drafting of early versions of the book proposal. Years later Arabella Pike believed in the book on the slenderest of evidence, and Felicity Bryan shepherded it through the commissioning process. My thanks to Arabella and to all of the team at William Collins who worked on the book.

Special thanks are due to Yelda Nasifoglu and Philip Beeley, who worked with me for two years on Euclid in Early Modern Britain; some of the research done during that project, and some of their ideas, have found their way into this book. The participants at our two workshops in 2016 and 2017 did more than they realised to inform and shape my thinking about Euclid and his Elements, as did those at the History of Mathematics Forum and the seminar on the History of the Exact Sciences at Oxford during its long gestation. I am particularly grateful to Richard Lawrence at the Oxford Bibliographical Press for the opportunity to set and print a page of the Elements by hand.

My thanks also to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for supporting our research project, and to All Souls College for its support of my work over many years. I am grateful to the staff at the Bodleian Library and particularly its Rare Books and Manuscripts Reading Room for help with a variety of sometimes obscure requests.

Anna-Marie Roos and Chris Hollings were kind enough to read the book in typescript, saving me from many blunders and improving it in numerous ways. The books remaining defects are of course my responsibility alone.

Among my family, Jessica, William, Ralph and Laurence kept me sane, and my parents as ever read drafts with enthusiasm and understanding.

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