Rebellion at the Royal Society Rebekah Higgitt Relishes a Biography of Mathematical Reformer Charles Hutton
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COMMENT BOOKS & ARTS and vultures. Finlayson suggests that tool this one) are logically sound, and The Smart side of our Neanderthal cousins. marks left on the bones indicate that some of Neanderthal would have benefited from However, one swallow — or even a handful the species on Gibraltar were processed for some editorial ‘tough love’. His point about — does not make a summer. We need to find food or, more controversially, for their feath- the neglect of avian evidence is well taken, more sites in which Neanderthals were put ers. He reminds us that birds come in many however. So is his reflection that most of through their behavioural paces. ■ shapes and sizes, with a variety of behaviours the humdrum things we do daily do not and responses to humans, which implies necessarily reflect our cognitive potential. Bernard Wood, a palaeoanthropologist who that their exploitation would have required His findings from Gibraltar — with those works on the distant ancestors of Neanderthals sophisticated knowledge. But he goes further, by anthropologist Dirk Hoffmann and his and modern humans, is University Professor arguing that this knowledge was comparable colleagues suggesting that Neanderthals of Human Origins at George Washington to that drawn on by modern birders. decorated the walls of three caves in Spain — University in Washington DC. Not all of Finlayson’s inferences (including might have exposed a cognitively advanced e-mail: [email protected] HISTORY Rebellion at the Royal Society Rebekah Higgitt relishes a biography of mathematical reformer Charles Hutton. ntil the 1990s, eighteenth-century In this, Hutton was fortunate. Schooling science received comparatively lit- in general, and mathematical education in tle attention. Historians of British particular, were in demand. By the age of 22, Uscience would leap from what they called he was advertising an ambitious curriculum the scientific revolution — culminating to cater to a range of pupils looking for spe- SHEILA TERRY/SPL in the foundation of the Royal Society and cialist training in Newcastle. Wardhaugh Isaac Newton’s achievements in the sev- shows why, and what sort of, mathematics enteenth century — to a ‘second scientific was important in Georgian Britain. An edu- revolution’ in the early nineteenth. This saw cation emphasizing basic principles, theory the founding of a host of specialist societies and applications in architecture, navigation, (astronomical, geological, geographical, zoo- trade and engineering was promoted as both logical). That narrative suggests that, by the useful and a means of refining minds. eighteenth century, the Royal Society was Hutton’s ability as mathematician and dominated by trivial pursuits and aristocratic teacher landed him one of the few available dilettantes rather than disciplinary experts. state-funded scientific positions. A public Although that has since been revised, the examination, private recommendations and mathematician Charles Hutton (1737–1823) a remorseless campaign of self-improvement would certainly have agreed, as his role in led to a professorship at the Royal Military the 1780s ‘Dissensions’ at the Royal Society Academy at Woolwich, near London. He attests. Hutton saw himself as continuing Mathematician Charles Hutton. taught there for more than 30 years. He also Newton’s legacy, applying mathematics to became a neighbour, collaborator and friend natural philosophy and to real-world prob- Hutton “carefully, deliberately, made himself of the astronomer royal, Nevil Maskelyne. lems, such as navigation, cartography and the leading voice speaking for mathematics in Through Maskelyne, Hutton contributed engineering. In Gunpowder and Geometry, English”. Hutton’s world was chiefly the class- to key projects, including efforts to improve historian of mathematics Benjamin room and print rather than the observatory or navigation by means of astronomy (H. Lewis- Wardhaugh gives us the man and his method. field. He was remarkably prolific, producing Jones Nature 564, As Wardhaugh shows, during the Dissen- mathematical tables, textbooks, dictionaries, 340–342; 2018). To sions, Hutton was dismissed from his post as compendia and periodicals. These works, measure Earth’s den- the society’s foreign secretary. That provoked which ranged from elementary arithmetic to sity, Maskelyne made those claiming to be the real, scientific mem- the mathematics of bridge building, leisure observations of the bers to attack the autocratic presidency of puzzles and historical discourses, cemented gravitational pull of botanist Joseph Banks, and the “train of fee- his reputation. It also gave him readers and a mountain’s mass; ble Amateurs” (as they put it) surrounding networks, both before his election to the his assistant surveyed him. The rebels included mathematicians Royal Society and after he was excluded. the site; and Hutton and astronomers, and a majority of active He overcame considerable obstacles, as undertook arduous members. Banks, however, rallied his own Wardhaugh reveals. Newcastle-born, Hutton Gunpowder and calculations. Yet Hut- supporters to pack the meetings and thereby was a “pit boy turned professor” who avoided Geometry: The ton’s most original defeat a series of votes aimed at limiting his life at the coalface, eventually becoming a fig- Life of Charles project was an experi- power. Hutton did not return to the society ure worthy of a bust (copies were produced to Hutton, Pit Boy, mental and math- until after Banks’s death, in 1820. allow at-home “veneration” by admirers). His Mathematician ematical investigation and Scientific Whereas Banks saw mathematics as little success began at school, where his intellectual Rebel of ballistics, including more than a tool “with which other sciences talents were recognized. He was an unproduc- BENJAMIN the weight and shape of are hewd into form”, Hutton championed tive coal hewer, but convinced his school- WARDHAUGH gun and projectile, the its significance. And, as Wardhaugh puts it, master that he could command a classroom. William Collins (2019) quality of gunpowder 36 | NATURE | VOL 566 | 7 FEBRUARY 2019 ©2019 Spri nger Nature Li mited. All ri ghts reserved. ©2019 Spri nger Nature Li mited. All ri ghts reserved. BOOKS & ARTS COMMENT and the effects of air pressure. One of his papers on this won the Royal Society’s Copley Medal in 1778. Books in brief Wardhaugh draws on sources from local, social, religious and military histories to Renewable Energy histories of science and mathematics. Few Bruce Usher COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS (2019) of Hutton’s personal papers have survived, Public understanding of the energy transition from fossil fuels is so we have lost much of his voice. That does woefully patchy — an artefact, in part, of political misinformation. So raise questions about the choice of writing a notes business expert Bruce Usher in this superb corrective, which full biography, especially because Wardhaugh reveals wind and solar to be the fastest-growing new power sources is commendably cautious in his claims for globally. Usher weighs up the science on and economics of sources Hutton’s significance. This is no ‘the man who from geothermal to hydro, and looks at financing, transportation, “grid changed X’ romp, but an informed, referenced parity” with fossil fuels and the social, environmental and geopolitical and contextualized history. It might have implications of the shift. The technology exists, getting cheaper by the made sense to place Hutton in a group biog- month: a stark contrast, Usher notes, to the cost of delay. raphy, or in a broader treatment of Georgian mathematical culture, in the style of Jenny Uglow’s 2002 book Lunar Men. Although Energy at the End of the World revealing, the life-trajectory approach leaves Laura Watts MIT PRESS (2019) little space to explore, say, key institutions The people of Orkney, an archipelago off Scotland’s northern coast, are such as the Spitalfields Mathematical Society renewable-energy pioneers. In a study mixing science, ethnography, or Royal Mathematical School. poetry, history and memoir, interdisciplinary scholar Laura Watts trains The approach does, however, ensure that a kaleidoscopic lens on Orcadian techno-innovation. She takes us the women in Hut- from the 2003 establishment of the European Marine Energy Centre “Technical and ton’s life are given (a testing site for tidal- and wave-energy generators) to networks intellectual due attention. As of micro-wind turbines and electric cars. In these weather-battered ability, with luck was typical, the islands, energy is literally “in your face, on your tongue”, but there is and opportunity, family business plenty of potential for replication elsewhere. could propel a — mathematics, few individuals computation, tran- up the social scription, editing Universal Life ladder.” — was a cottage Alan Boss OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS (2019) industry in which It’s astonishing that just a decade on from the launch of NASA’s wife, son and daughters were involved, if offi- Kepler space telescope — the first mission dedicated to detecting cially obscured. We follow, as far as possible, exoplanets — we now know that most stars spangling the night their lives and the dramas of bereavement, sky have planetary systems, many boasting habitable worlds. including the loss of Hutton’s favourite daugh- Astrophysicist Alan Boss, chair of NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration ter, Charlotte, marital breakdown (Hutton left Program Analysis Group, delivers a blow-by-blow history of the his first wife,