A biography of Charles Hutton (1737-1823)

查尔斯赫顿（1737年至1823年），教师和推动者的数学，是最有名的在他的一生作为数学教授在皇家军事学院，伍尔维奇。在长期和极其活跃的职业生涯中，他也是一个培训师的数学教师，负责人的写作和数学学校在纽卡斯尔，外交秘书的皇家学会伦敦。他的父亲是达勒姆一个煤矿监工，年轻时曾在矿井下工作，赫顿是一位多产的作家和编辑，他的大量印刷品是科学和数学史学家的富矿。他是编辑流行的女士日记，每年汇编的数学和口头难题;他还从事每年的航海年鉴，其表的月球位置有效地解决了问题，确定经度的船舶在海上。他的数学和哲学词典（1795年至1796年）仍然是一个重要的来源，有关数学和数学家的时期，他的数学课程是多次重印，并被翻译成各种语言，包括阿拉伯语。在伍尔维奇，赫顿培训了一代炮兵军官和军事工程师，从1773年，直到他在1807年退休。他进行实验，完善理论结果，并监督革命的态度使用仪器，数学表格和最新的科学成果的炮兵军官。他可以公正地说，发挥了关键的“密室”的作用，在投影英国的权力周围的地球仪在格鲁吉亚后期。在皇家学会赫顿被授予科普利奖章，他的工作弹道学;后来，在1783年至1784年，他参与了一个著名的争端与社会的主席约瑟夫银行，最终关注的地方数学和数学家在社会。赫顿离开英国皇家学会的结果，但辩论将继续下去，并最终的意见，赫顿和他的支持者将来确定的作用，数学在英国科学在未来几十年。赫顿的著作和教育工作将成为一个重要组成部分，改革英国数学在19世纪初。没有英国数学家，他这一代人有这样的影响，他的领域或更广泛的世界，但赫顿从来没有受到一本书的长度传记。拟议的项目将涉及大约9个月的档案和印刷资料方面的密集工作。这个项目的重要档案是在皇家协会和桑德赫斯特;赫顿的是一个有据可查的生活，至少从他1773年搬到伦敦。随后将有一个平等的写作时间，以产生一个严格的，但可访问的传记，这一显着的个人，以及相关的研究论文，解决更广泛的主题所产生的研究。作为最明显的数学作家在英国在格鲁吉亚时期后期，赫顿作为一个透镜，通过这个项目将解决更广泛的问题，不断变化的作用，数学在这一时期，其中一些将更适当地解决以外的传记。

Charles Hutton (1737-1823), teacher and promoter of mathematics, was best known during his lifetime as Professor of Mathematics at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. During a long and extremely active career he was also a trainer of mathematics teachers, the head of a 'writing and mathematical school' in Newcastle, and Foreign Secretary to the Royal Society of London. In origin he was the son of a Durham colliery overseer; in his youth he had worked down the pits himself.Hutton was a prolific author and editor, and his vast printed output is a rich mine for historians of science and mathematics. He was the editor of the popular Ladies' Diary, an annual compilation of mathematical and verbal puzzles; he also worked on the annual Nautical Almanack, whose tables of lunar positions effectively solved the problem of determining the longitude for ships at sea. His Mathematical and Philosophical Dictionary (1795-6) is still an important source for information about mathematics and mathematicians in the period; his Course of Mathematics was many times reprinted, and was translated into various languages, including Arabic.At Woolwich, Hutton trained a generation of artillery officers and military engineers from 1773 until his retirement in 1807. He performed experiments, refined theoretical results, and oversaw a revolution in attitudes to the use of instruments, mathematical tables and up-to-date scientific results by artillery officers. He may justly be said to have played a key 'back-room' role in the projection of British power around the globe in the late Georgian period.At the Royal Society Hutton was awarded the Copley medal for his work on ballistics; later, in 1783-4 he was involved in a celebrated dispute with the Society's President Joseph Banks, ultimately concerned with the place of mathematics and mathematicians in the Society. Hutton left the Royal Society as a result, but the debate would continue, and ultimately the views of Hutton and his supporters would come to determine the role of mathematics in British science over the following decades. Hutton's writings and educational work would become an important part of the reform of British mathematics in the early nineteenth century.No British mathematician of his generation had such an impact on his field or the wider world, yet Hutton has never been the subject of a book-length biography. The proposed project will involve approximately nine months of intensive work on archival and printed sources. Important archives for this project are in the Royal Society and at Sandhurst; Hutton's was a well-documented life, at least from his 1773 move to London. There will follow an equal period of writing-up, to produce a rigorous but accessible biography of this remarkable individual, together with associated research papers addressing wider themes arising from the research. As the most visible mathematical writer in Britain during the late Georgian period, Hutton serves as a lens through which this project will address wider questions about the changing role of mathematics in the period, some of which will be more appropriately addressed outside the biography.