6. De Morgan and Mathematics Education

Augustus De Morgan might be seen as a man of a single institution: the London University, renamed University College London (UCL) in 1836. But he had experience of several others: the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (SDUK), the Royal Astronomical Society and the London Mathematical Society, among others. Most significantly, perhaps, he went to London after graduating from the University of Cambridge, which was throughout the nineteenth century the dominant site of mathematical work in the United Kingdom. During his long career in London, De Morgan kept a watching brief on the teaching of mathematics in Cambridge and elsewhere, publishing several articles on the subject. Some of his articles appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Education, edited throughout its life (1830-5) by De Morgan’s UCL colleague George Long. The Journal, to which he contributed over 30 articles, was published by the SDUK, of which De Morgan was an active member. This chapter discusses De Morgan’s often critical accounts of the curricula and teaching, especially of mathematics, in the universities of Cambridge and Oxford and elsewhere.