The Mathematical Miscellany (1836-1839) (Q1062040)

In 1830, the self-taught mathematics teacher Charles Gill (1805-1855) emigrated from England to the USA, where he soon found employment at the Flushing Institute, Long Island (eventually Saint Paul's College). In 1836, he founded the Mathematical Miscellany on a pattern inspired by the English Ladies Diary and the American Mathematics Diary, to both of which he had contributed solutions of mathematical problems. The journal was structured in a ''junior'' and a ''senior department'', both of which contained some articles but mostly problems and solutions to previous problems. The articles in the senior department were partly written by the best mathematical minds of the country (among which Benjamin Peirce) and partly translated from fairly recent European publications. A comparison with the Mathematical Correspondent (published 1804-1806) and even with the Mathematical Diary (1825-1832) shows the development of American mathematics over three decades. The level of the problems has become much higher since the Correspondent, and while even the contributors of the Diary were still at most acquainted with the works of Lagrange and Laplace and with the antiquated Britich 18 th century mathematics, those of the Miscellany were well versed in contemporary European mathematics (Legendre, Cauchy, Sturm, Abel, Jacobi, Liouville, Poisson and others). On the other hand, the circle of people attaining this level of competence was utterly restricted. The number of subscribers to the Miscellany stayed below one hundred (concentrated around Saint Paul College and some other New York schools), while the Correspondent had reached approximately 400. Apart from the lucrative writing of text-books, the interest in mathematics in even the best Academic community was too weak to express itself in any interest in the journal - a natural consequence of a situation where colleges offered no specialized mathematics courses (be it at the undergraduate level) and claimed no research on part of the staff. The article contains further biographical data on Gill and on Nancy Buttrick, the first woman known by name to have published mathematical work in the USA (in the junior department of the Miscellany, but very skilfully).