Wranglers in exile

Barrow-Green, June (2011). Wranglers in exile. In: Flood, Raymond; Rice, Adrian and Wilson, Robin eds. Mathematics in Victorian Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 121–174.

URL: http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199601394.d...

Abstract

After the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, Britain began a period of Imperial expansion tht continued throughout the Victorian era. As the colonies grew, so did the number of colonial institutions of higher education. For founders of mathematics departments looking to perpetuate the tradition of the mother country, Cambridge was the obvious model to follow, and many new colonial universities, especially those in Australia, provided a source of employment for Cambridge wranglers. Mathematics graduates from Scotland also found their way overseas, notably to New Zealand and South Africa. India provided employment not only on the sub-Continent, but in England too, the latter throught the mathematics departments of the East India Company's training colleges of Addiscombe and Haileybury and the Royal Indian Engineering College at Cooper's Hill. Meanwhile Canada, with its older tradition of higher education, did not so much provide employment for wranglers, as a place for them to visit. The British Association meetings held in Montreal (1884) and Toronto (1897) were the first to be held on foreign soil, and several mathematicians took the opportunity to make the trip across the Atlantic.

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