A biography of Charles Hutton (1737-1823)

查尔斯·赫顿(1737-1823)，数学教师和推动者，在伍尔维奇皇家军事学院担任数学教授期间最为人所知。在漫长而又极其活跃的职业生涯中，他还担任过数学教师的培训师、纽卡斯尔一所“写作和数学学校”的校长以及伦敦皇家学会的外交大臣。他的父亲是达勒姆煤矿的一名监督员；年轻时，他曾亲自在矿井下工作。赫顿是一位多产的作家和编辑，他的大量印刷作品对科学和数学历史学家来说是一座富饶的宝库。他是广受欢迎的《女士日记》的编辑，这是一本收集数学和语言谜题的年度汇编；他还撰写了年度航海年鉴，其月球位置表有效地解决了海上船只确定经度的问题。他的《数学和哲学词典》(1795-16年)仍然是那个时期有关数学和数学家的重要信息来源；他的数学课程多次重印，并被翻译成各种语言，包括阿拉伯语。在伍尔维奇，从1773年到1807年退休，赫顿培养了一代炮兵军官和军事工程师。他进行实验，完善理论结果，并监督了炮兵军官对使用仪器、数学表和最新科学结果的态度革命。可以说，在格鲁吉亚晚期，他在英国在全球范围内的力量投射中扮演了关键的“幕后”角色。在皇家学会，赫顿因其在弹道方面的工作而被授予科普利勋章；后来，在1783-174年，他与学会主席约瑟夫·班克斯发生了一场著名的争执，最终涉及到数学和数学家在学会中的地位。赫顿因此离开了皇家学会，但争论仍将继续，最终，赫顿和他的支持者的观点将决定数学在接下来的几十年里在英国科学中的作用。赫顿的著作和教育工作将成为19世纪初英国数学改革的重要组成部分。在他那一代英国数学家中，没有一位对他的领域或更广泛的世界产生如此大的影响，但赫顿从未成为一本书长的传记的主题。拟议的项目将涉及大约九个月关于档案和印刷资料的密集工作。这个项目的重要档案保存在皇家学会和桑德赫斯特博物馆；赫顿的生活被很好地记录下来，至少从他1773年搬到伦敦开始是这样。随后将有相同的写作时间，为这位杰出的个人撰写一本严谨但容易理解的传记，以及相关的研究论文，解决研究中产生的更广泛的主题。作为英国乔治亚时代晚期最引人注目的数学作家，赫顿是这个项目的一个镜头，通过这个镜头，这个项目将解决有关数学在那个时期的角色变化的更广泛的问题，其中一些问题将在传记之外得到更恰当的解决。

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.