330 



NATURE 



[March i6, 1922 



said to be necessary, and has probably under-estimated 

 the effects on the university income of some of the 

 proposed changes. If these effects be demonstrated, 

 the raising of the general university grant may be 

 expected. 



The discussion of the new Bill shows that university 

 teachers in Australia are profoundly anxious as to the 

 present conditions, are doubtful of the possibility of 

 maintaining the university work at an appropriate 

 level, and are alarmed at the discontent rife among all 

 grades of the staff. It is impossible for any one not 

 intimately acquainted with existing conditions in 

 Australia to judge the financial estimates, but it is 

 obvious that if a university staff is thoroughly, dis- 

 contented its efficiency is bound to suffer. Teachers 

 who are not paid a living wage must supplement 

 their income by outside work which, except perhaps 

 in departments of applied science, inevitably detracts 

 from their usefulness to the university. 



Those interested in the progress of the universities 

 of the British Empire will hope that the Victorian 

 Government, before the new Bill is passed, will allay 

 the distracting anxieties of the university staff by 

 making sure that the nominal increase of 30 per cent, 

 in the general purposes grant is an actual increase of 

 this amount, and by amending the regulations relating 

 to the council so as to guarantee a larger representation 

 of university teachers. The provision that one of the 

 six members to be co-opted by the council and two 

 of the twelve to be elected by convocation must be 

 university teachers would give a staff representation 

 of one in five, which is the average in the younger 

 British universities. If by such changes the new 

 scheme gained the confidence of the staff the reforms 

 would restrengthen the university, which has hitherto 

 been a glory to the State of Victoria and an important 

 asset in the development of Australia. 



Greek Mathematics. 



A History of Greek Mathematics. By Sir Thomas 

 Heath. Vol. i. From Thales to Euclid. Pp. xv 

 4-446. Vol. 2, From Aristarchus to Diophantus. 

 Pp. xi + 586. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921.) 

 2 vols., 50^. net. 



WERE this book only for the mathematician it 

 would be no book for me ; but it is a great 

 deal more. It is for all who care for the historical 

 aspect of science ; it is for all lovers of Greek, for 

 mathematics is a true " Legacy of Greece," and is 

 interwoven through and through with Greek thought 

 and philosophy. 



A couple of accidents in boyhood (if I may be allowed 

 the reminiscence) made this subject curiously attractive 

 NO. 2733, VOL. 109] 



to me. George Johnston Allman, pioneer in this 

 country of the renewed study of Greek geometry, 

 belonged to the little band of scholarly professors who 

 taught in those days in Galway College ; he had more 

 of mathematics and more of fine historic sense than 

 of Greek letters, and here his colleagues — " Tom " 

 Maguire the Platonist, Davies the editor of the 

 Eumenides, and my father, who was his kinsman — 

 combined to help him. In our quiet Galway life we 

 heard for months together little else than of Allman 's 

 book and the long discussions which went to the 

 making of it. 



About the same time I had for schoolmaster in 

 Edinburgh (and long after for a close friend) Dr. John 

 Sturgeon Mackay, as deeply versed in Greek mathe- 

 matics as Allman himself. In Edinburgh he was 

 scarcely known save to his schoolboys, and lived a 

 life as neglected as that still greater Hellenist Veitch 

 (of the " Greek Verbs ") had done ; but he spent his 

 vacations reading Greek MSS. in the great libraries, 

 and in Paris he was intimate with Paul Tannery and 

 the scholars of the day. Mackay's life-task was to 

 edit Pappus, the one great Alexandrine omitted by 

 the Oxford editors of the eighteenth century. After 

 twenty years' work the thing was done, and lay in 

 his desk with every diagram exquisitely drawn and 

 every page and footnote written and rewritten. He 

 went one day into Williams and Norgate's bookshop, 

 then in Edinburgh, and the manager said : "I have 

 something that will interest you to-day. Dr. Mackay " ; 

 and he handed him the first volume, fresh from Leipzig, 

 of Hultsch's edition of Pappus. The two men must 

 (as Mackay told me afterwards) have been following 

 one another unawares from library to library, collating 

 the same MSS., noting the same minute textual details, 

 and Mackay's intimacy with the French had helped 

 doubtless, in those long-ago post-war years, to keep 

 him unacquainted with the German and his work. 

 Anyway, there was an end of the matter. Some 

 might have hurried into print, trusting to little points 

 of their own, claiming something of the reward — but 

 not Mackay. The work was done and well done. 

 Pappus was edited. It was a scholar's tragedy — and 

 nothing more ! 



Sir Thomas Heath has produced one important work 

 after another, while living all the while a life of strenuous 

 official toil and responsibility. His Diophantus, his 

 Apollonius, and (greatest perhaps of all) his Euclid are 

 part of the solid foundation of this " History of Greek 

 Mathematics." He has had more to build on by a 

 long way than Allman and Gow had fifty years ago; 

 new texts have been edited, and men like Heiberg, 

 Tannery, Zeuthen, Aldo Mieli, and (last but not least) 

 Gino Loria have dealt with the matter in part and 



