Preface to the Lucasian Legacy
This dissertation was born of my interest in the history of higher education. One key component of a college or university is the endowed chair. It allows the person occupying the chair to be free, for the most part, from the usual pressures of academic life. The hope is that this freedom will produce great thoughts and works. Endowed chairs have a long history, but this work is about a particular chair, the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge University, England, established in 1663, which continues today. It is a wonderful example of the success of a donor's investment in higher education.
The dissertation is divided into chapters by century. Each century is given a political and scientific context, wherein each professor who held the Chair is presented. There is a range of both the quality and quantity of work produced by the professors: some were stellar producers and some used the Chair merely as a convenient source of income.
My research extended from the archives and rare books section of Cambridge University, where I had access to original documents in Latin and seals of the King, to interviews in England in person and by electronic mail. The material has ranged from first editions of books published in the late 1600's to modern film and popular television programs. The academic fields of the professors included mathematics, physics, computer science, fluid mechanics, aerodynamics, and theology.
My goal was to present the history of an important chair, since none existed, and to show how an endowed academic chair fits into the history of the development of knowledge and understanding from Isaac Barrow in 1664 to Stephen Hawking in 1993.
I express my thanks to my dissertation committee of Professor Pierre Lambert, Professor Ted Youn, and my advisor, Professor Edward Power.
A number of people helped me with this dissertation. I want to thank Jean Flanagan, MIT Lab for Nuclear Science, Dr. Elizabeh Leedham-Greene, head of the Archives at Cambridge University Library, the Staff at The Royal Society of London, and Professor Ronald Probstein, MIT Mechanical Engineering Department.
I also wish to thank Sir M. James Lighthill and Professor Stephen Hawking for being so generous with their time.