Abstract
THE death at Colwyn Bay on February 1 of Mr. Rawdon Levett, at seventy-eight years of age, will be regretted by none more than by the members of the Mathematical Association, of which, under its old name of the Association for, the Improvement of Geometrical Teaching, he was one of the original founders. From his pen, in NATURE, of December 29,1870, p. 169, first came the suggestion that such an Association should be formed, and the first conference was held at University College, London, on January 17, 1871. Levett possessed much more than the driving power and organising capacity which made him so successful a secretary in the first twelve years of the Association. Unlike most of his contemporaries he had familiarised himself with the continental text-books and with the methodology of his subject as taught in France, Germany, and Italy. The ideas of non-Euclidean geometry found in him an apt exponent to any who cared in those days to listen to him, and in the revolution that was to come in the fields of geometry and analysis he played for a time a prominent part. His “Elements of Trigonometry,” which he brought out in collaboration with Dr. Davison in 1892, shows how much he had been influenced by De Morgan, by Cauchy and the continental school, and by Chrystal-and in that case the influence had been reciprocal.
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G., W. Mr. Rawdon Levett. Nature 111, 264 (1923). https://doi.org/10.1038/111264a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/111264a0