Contributors to improving the teaching of calculus in early 19th-century England

Abstract

M. V. Wilkes has discussed the introduction of continental mathematical ideas into the Cambridge curriculum in about 1820, in terms of the activity of Babbage, Peacock and Herschel, with a short mention of Robert Woodhouse (F.R.S., 1802). Woodhouse’s book on Analytical Calculation (1803), and the Preface of his Calculus of Variations (1810), show that he gave special consideration to learning by students and in particular proposed the introduction of the Leibnizian system in teaching the calculus. The idea of such ‘improvement’ was well received and developed by Dionysius Lardner (F. R. S., 1828) of Dublin and University College London, for he proceeded to try to do just that in two of his own books on analysis.