Abstract
NOT very long ago (perhaps fifteen or twenty years) an English lady, spending a visit in Utrecht, met a distinguished Dutch professor of mathematics. In the course of conversation the lady asked the professor what he thought of contemporary English mathematicians and their work. The answer was not calculated to flatter our national vanity, for it was to the effect that he rarely looked at English mathematical papers, because they were so unconnected with the general progress of the science, and written in such a peculiar way that he could scarcely understand them. Incredible as it seems, this opinion was expressed when Salmon, Cayley, Sylvester, and Clifford had published all their best work. Prejudices die hard, and the professor's attitude would have been intelligible in the earlier part of the nineteenth century.
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M., G. Mathematics in the United States. Nature 104, 601 (1920). https://doi.org/10.1038/104601a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/104601a0