Oxford Figures, Chapter 1: 800 years of mathematical traditions

The literary tradition

A characteristic of Oxford academic life over almost the whole eight centuries of its existence has been a literary self-awareness, so that we have the benefit of centuries of descriptions of Oxford activities, mathematical and otherwise. An early account of Oxford student life is found in The Canterbury tales , written in the late fourteenth century, where Geoffrey Chaucer told a salacious tale involving Nicholas, a poor Oxford scholar lodging in a room in a rich carpenter's house, who kept by his bed a copy of Ptolemy's Almagest, an astrolabe, and counters for making calculations (`augrim-stones'):

His Almageste and bokes grete and smale,
His astrelabie, longinge for his art,
His augrim-stones layen faire a-part
On shelves couched at his beddes heed.

Chaucer's knowledge of astronomical instruments and practices was deep. Besides poetry he wrote, in the 1390s, two astronomical texts, A treatise on the astrolabe and Equatorie of the planetis . These texts are notable, not least for being written in the vernacular (rather than, as hitherto, in Latin), fostering a tradition of writing on mathematical and scientific matters in the English language. The awareness of Oxford science and instruments shown in his writings suggests that Chaucer was educated at Oxford, although there is no extant archival evidence to this effect.

Chaucer was not alone in representing the typical Oxford student as used to using an astrolabe, the slide-rule or electronic calculator of its day. A disputation of 1420 recounted the nocturnal adventures of one Robert Dobbys of Merton, attempting to find his way back to college--a distance of barely a couple of hundred yards if traversed in a direct line:

It is related of him that one night after a deep carouse, when on his way from Carfax to Merton, he found it advisable to take his bearings. Whipping out his astrolabe he observed the altitude of the stars, but, on getting the view of the firmament through the sights, he fancied that sky and stars were rushing down upon him. Stepping quickly aside he quietly fell into a large pond. `Ah, ah', says he, `now I'm in a nice soft bed I will rest in the Lord.' Recalled to his senses when the cold struck through, he rose from the watery couch and proceeded to his room where he retired to bed fully clothed. On the morrow, in answer to kind inquiries, he denied all knowledge of the pond.

It was Chaucer, though, who provided the definitive image of an Oxford academic, in his portrayal of the clerk of Oxenford. The final line of his description here stands as a noble image to which many Oxford figures have aspired down the centuries.

Of studie took he most cure and most hede.
Noght o word spak he more than was nede,
And that was seyd in forme and reverence,
And short and quik,
and ful of hy sentence.
Souninge in moral vertu was his speche,
And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.

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