

Bartholomew Price. 33 



His reputation as a mathematician rests mainly upon his elaborace 

 ' Treatise on Infinitesimal Calculus,' in four volumes, which in the 

 second edition extends to 2663 octavo pages. 



At the time that Professor Price was specially engaged in teaching 

 he was impressed by the difficulty which an English student expe- 

 rienced in becoming acquainted with the progress which had been 

 made, both in this countiy and on the Continent, in the developments 

 and applications of the differential and integral calculus, and he set. 

 himself the heavy task of supplying a book which would assist to a 

 great extent in removing this difficulty. 



The work he contemplated and eventually produced was somewhat 

 on the lines of Professor De Morgan's Treatise on the Differential 

 and Integral Calculus, published under the auspices of the Society for 

 the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge ; but though this book, which had 

 then been completed nearly ten years, and was becoming less easy to 

 be obtained, suggested the scope of the new treatise, he endeavoured 

 to improve upon it by introducing the more recent investigations and 

 by arranging the matter in a manner more likely to be useful to a 

 student. 



The first volume on the Differential Calculus, with its applications 

 to Geometry appeared in 1852, and was followed, after an interval of 

 about two years, by the second volume on the Integral Calculus, the 

 Calculus of Variations and Differential Equations. After, again, an 

 interval of about two years, in 1856, the third volume was published 

 treating of Statics and Dynamics of a Particle. The fourth volume 

 on the Dynamics of Material Systems, did not appear until six years 

 later, viz., in 1862. 



Those who were studying mathematics, not only in Oxford but 

 throughout the country during the decade covered by the publication 

 of Professor Price's work, will remember with gratitude the wide field 

 of knowledge that he opened up to them, and the stores of information 

 that he placed at their disposal with such remarkable skill in arrange- 

 ment and clearness in exposition. Even if exception might be taken 

 to some details in the method adopted in treating the fundamental 

 principles of mechanics, there could be no difference of opinion as to 

 the usefulness of a work presenting such an important group of sub- 

 jects from the point of view in which they were regarded by one well 

 qualified to discuss their inherent difficulties, who had spared no pains 

 in acquiring a knowledge of all that was most valuable in the writings 

 of those who had preceded him. 



Kegarding this treatise as the text-book used by his pupils, and as 

 representing his oral teaching a circumstance to which reference is 

 made in every volume it affords the strongest evidence as to the high 

 standard to which Professor Price strove to raise the Oxford school of 

 mathematics. That it relieved a want really felt at the time of its 



c 



