Seminar 4: Diagrammatization of written mathematical practices

Célestin Xiaohan Zhou (Institute for the History of Natural Sciences, CAS, & School of Mathematics, The University of Edinburgh)

Abstract TBA 

Typesetting Modern Algebra: The Modern Reception of Early-Modern Contexts in Théotiste Lefèvre's Guide Pratique du Compositeur, 1855

J.P. Ascher (University of Edinburgh)

Algebraic typesetting has an uneven history. While Joseph Moxon describes typography as a mathematical art in 1683-4 after he had likely produced some of his own type for abstract symbol systems, he provides little specific guidance to setting mathematics of any sort. In 1755, John Smith explains that most compositors dislike setting algebra because the authors invent their own symbols, are very particular, and don't understand the difficulties printing. Théotiste Lefèvre's manual of 1855, then, is one of the earliest systematic, published accounts of setting mathematics for a larger community of printers. But even more importantly, Théodore de Vinne sponsors a translation of Lefèvre by Henry Fine for his epoch-making manual of 1904 rather than writing a new section on algebraic typesetting. Lefèvre's approach, then, appears to become standard in the anglophone and francophone world, for example influencing the 1962 American Mathematical Society's Manual for Authors. This paper will present Lefèvre both retrospectively and prospectively: examining the particular early-modern practices for typesetting that he aimed to regularise and showing how those practices became part of the look of modern algebra. In situating the practices chronologically, the paper attempts to think about how now-invisible, taken-for-granted aspects of modern mathematical symbolism can be investigated and articulated backwards. Influence is difficult to trace and this paper proposes to reflect on approaches to influence as well as laying out the historical facts.