OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
The mathematical culture of early modern London was extraordinarily rich with a multitude of authors, printers, booksellers, instrument makers, and accountants plying their trade. Knowledge was communicated, disseminated, and taught primarily by men with a practical background in a variety of locations ranging from coffee shops to the homes of more well off individuals. Mathematics permeated warehouses, dockyards, and building sites, while its practitioners frequented public lectures at Gresham College or joined one of a number of clubs devoted to promoting geometry, astronomy or more practical disciplines such as navigation.
The talk will consider the role of Euclid’s Elements of Geometry in this culture of learning and practice against the background of an almost complete absence of organized instruction in mathematics in seventeenth-century England. It will conclude by suggesting that advances in practical mathematics were directly related to a call for the reform of university teaching in mathematics around 1700.
