Heath

Thomas Little Heath

Born: 5 Oct 1861 in Barnetby le Wold, Lincoln, England
Died: 16 March 1940 in Ashtead, Surrey, England

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Heath went up to Trinity College Cambridge in 1879. He was awarded a first class degree in both mathematics and classics. He took the Civil Service examination in 1884 and obtained the top mark. He became a clerk in the Treasury and was quickly promoted. he left the Treasury in 1919 for the National Debt Office, holding a post there until he retired in 1926.

However Heath had two separate careers, one as a civil servant, the other as one of the leading world experts on the history of mathematics.

He was a specialist in the history of Greek mathematics. He wrote articles on 'Pappus' and 'Porisms' for Encyclopaedia Britannica while still an undergraduate. In his first year at the Treasury he wrote an essay on Diophantus and this won him a Cambridge Fellowship. Cayley recommended its publication by Cambridge University Press.

In 1896 he published Apollonius of Perga , in 1897 Archimedes and in 1908 the three volume work on Euclid. Heath's translation of Euclid has since become the standard English version of the text.

Heath was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1912. Perhaps his most famous work History of Greek Mathematics appeared in 1921.

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. D'Arcy W Thompson, Thomas Little Heath, Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society of London III (1941), 409-426. 
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