Tony Mann

Director of Resources, School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences
The University of Greenwich

National Teaching Fellow, 2008

Contact: phone (+44) (0) 20 8331 8709, Email: A.Mann@gre.ac.uk, Twitter @Tony_Mann

Research interests: mainly history of mathematics. If you're on Facebook, check out the group Who invented mathematics? I also maintain a very incomplete list of mathematical fiction.

Here I'm demonstrating "Leonardo da Vinci's perpetual motion machine" (as sold by the V&A at their recent Leonardo exhibition). In fact this implementation is based on the principle of the "Uphill roller" described by William Leybourn in Pleasure with Profit (1694). For more information see Julian Havil's article in Plus magazine.

See me on video:

• Talking about prehistoric stone balls during the BSHM Early Mathematics Day at Gresham College, May 2011
• From Tristram Shandy to Bad Sex: some uses of mathematics in fiction at the London Knowledge Lab, October 2010
• Heading for Trouble: the Perils of Navigation at Gresham College, October 2005

Here's a report of a recent talk to the Maths Society at Eltham College.

Recent publications:

• with Mark McCartney, an essay From Quaternions to Lara Croft, in The unplanned impact of mathematics, edited by Peter Rowlett, Nature, 475 (14 July 2011), 166-169.
• History of Mathematics and History of Science, Isis, Vol. 102, No. 3 (September 2011), pp. 518-526.
• with A.D.D. Craik, Scotland: land of opportunity but few rewards in Mathematics in Victorian Britain, edited by Raymond Flood, Adrian Rice and Robin Wilson (2011: Oxford, Oxford University Press), 76-101.
• From Sylvia Plath's The bell jar to the Bad Sex Award: a partial account of the uses of mathematics in fiction. BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics, 25 (2). pp. 58-66. ISSN 1749-8430 (print) 1749-8341 (online).
• Workshop Report: 'Ideas Exchange: HE Mathematics Curriculum Innovation', MSOR Connections vol 11 number 3 (Autumn 2011), 54-55.
• with Mark McCartney and Noel-Ann Bradshaw, Mathematical Motivators: Using the history of Mathematics to enrich the curriculum, MSOR Connections vol 11 number 2 (summer 2011), 14-16.
• with Noel-Ann Bradshaw and Mark McCartney, Using history in mathematics teaching: some open educational resources for the future, in CETL-MSOR Conference 2010 Conference Proceedings, edited by David Green, 23-28.

Recent projects:

• Mathematical Motivators: Mark McCartney (University of Ulster), Noel-Ann Bradshaw (University of Greenwich) and I, funded by a grant from the HEA MSOR Network, created a range of resources about the history of mathematics. These are intended to complement the mathematics curriculum in higher education and show how the mathematics studied at University came about. The resources can be found at the project website and are described in this article in MSOR Connections and in this conference paper.
• Being a Professional Mathematician: Chris Good (University of Birmingham) and I are working on a project, funded by the National HE STEM Programme Mathematics Curriculum Innovation Fund, to create resources for the HE mathematics curriculum on "Being a Professional Mathematician". There will be a workshop about this project in the spring of 2012 and, very shortly, a project website.

Professional Bodies:

President: British Society for the History of Mathematics
Secretary and Treasurer, Leonardo da Vinci Society
Member (and Editor for the Newsletter), London Mathematical Society
Fellow, Institute of Mathematics and its Applications
Member of the Council of the UK Mathematics Trust
Member, the Mathematical Association
Fellow, Higher Education Academy

I am a member of a number of societies relating to my interest in the history of mathematics, including the Edinburgh Mathematical Society, the European Mathematical Society, the Computer Arts Society (a specialist group of the British Computer Society)and the Scientific Instrument Society. I am also a member of the Birkbeck Neo-Latin Reading Group and attend the monthly Early Modern Philosophy and the Scientific Imagination Seminar series (EMPHASIS).