Overview

This is the story of a remarkable private tutor, William Hopkins, and the education and subsequent careers of a group of his students - so-called Wranglers.

The book takes advantage of first-hand accounts of life at Cambridge to allow the reader a glimpse inside Cambridge 's colleges and, in particular, Hopkins' tutoring rooms. It follows the evolution of the curriculum and the slow reforms that led to Cambridge 's dominance of higher education. It surveys the scientific achievements of the time and looks at the disproportionate contributions made by Scottish and Irish alumni in establishing Cambridge as a research centre for the mathematical and physical sciences.

Hopkins influence was far-reaching and the book surveys the careers of some of his best students. We can also see what these students looked like with the reproduction of Hopkins own collection of 42 pencil and watercolour portraits of his top students - including GG Stokes, Lord Kelvin, A. Cayley - reproduced here for the first time.

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9781848007123

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<p>From the reviews: <p> Mr Hopkins Men is a book which takes the reader on a hike across nineteenth century mathematics in the British Isles. It takes in university reform, the lives of great mathematicians and the cultural influences and religious controversies in Victorian Britain. The author provides an engaging combination of historical colour, breadth of scope and fascinating detail in his narrative. It was a joy to read [Mark McCartney, University of Ulster: BSHM Bulletin] <p> Groomed for Success <p>A few years ago, Alex Craik, a mathematician from the university of St. Andrews, found an obscure collection of portraits in the Wren Library of Trinity College at Cambridge University. The people depicted all had one thing in common: they had been pupils of the famous 19th-century Cambridge private mathematics tutor William Hopkins. He had taught a group that included George Stokes, William Thomson and James Clerk Maxwell, as well as other less famous but still highly successful sci

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