All talks

< back to list of all my talks.

Maths and Computing History tour of Nottingham

University of Greenwich (17/11/2010). With Samuel Hansen.

Peter Rowlett & Samuel Hansen.

Since June, Peter Rowlett and Samuel Hansen have been recording a weekly transatlantic chat about mathematics news called the Math/Maths Podcast. Peter is the "maths" side of the conversation from Nottingham, England, and Samuel is the "math" side from Las Vegas, USA. In November 2010 Samuel will visit Peter in Nottingham and the two are coming to Greenwich for a live recording of their podcast and an afternoon of mathematical activities.

During Samuel's visit, Peter will take him on a Maths and Computing History tour of Nottingham. The first event of the afternoon will be a talk by Peter and Samuel on what they have learned on this tour. Nottingham is home to George Green, a local miller and self-taught mathematician whose discoveries in the early 19th Century form part of the story of healing the split in mathematics caused by differences between Newton and Leibniz over the Calculus.

Nottingham is also the location of the Byron family grave, burial place of Ada, Countess of Lovelace, whose work with Babbage on the design for his analytical engine in the late 19th Century means she is regarded as the world's first computer programmer. In the first part of the 20th Century, Nottingham was home to the European factory of Burroughs Adding Machines, a 'must have' office device until the advent of modern computers. Finally we will tell the story of a visit to Nottingham in 1929 by Albert Einstein to give a lecture on his new theory of relativity.