January 08, 2017 Monday
Bedtime Story
The Mathematics Tutor
Lady Byron, mother of young Ada was
extremely cautious about what daughter was taught and also what she was not.
She strongly discouraged any study of
literatures as she associated it with the acclaimed madness of her husband.
She even employed the famous mathematician
and logician Augustus De Morgan for her daughter as she grew older.
It was her belief that study of mathematics
and logic and deprivation of poetry and literature would keep her daughter sane
and earthed to the ground.
Tried as hard as she did, the young Ada did
inherit and embody many of her father’s dark and rebellious traits.
At a very young age she fell in love with
her tutor and unsuccessfully tried to elope with him.
Thankfully she also inherited her mother’s
intellect and at a very early age perhaps by 12 her mathematical talent began
to become visible.
One of the tutors that she was gifted by
her mother was a Scottish science writer and a polymath by the name of Mary
Somerville.
She was specifically the tutor for
mathematics of young Ada Byron.
She was born in 1780 in Scotland and her
story is perhaps as fascinating as that of Lady Ada.
Mary Somerville till the age of 10 was an
average girl who enjoyed roaming in gardens with flowers and birds when one day
he father who was an admiral said to her mother:
“This kind of life will never do, Mary must
at least know how to write and keep accounts.”
So her father sent her to an expensive
boarding school and when she returned after a year she was a completely transformed
woman.
In her own correspondence with her brother
she had written:
“I was no longer amused in the gardens, but
wondered about the country.
When the tide was out I spent hours on the
sands, looking at the star-fish and sea-urchins, or watching the children
digging for sand-eels, cockles and the spouting razor-fish.
I made collection of shells, such as were
cast ashore, some so small that they appeared as white specks in patches of
black sand.
There was a small pier on the sands for
shipping limestone brought from the coal mines inland.
I was astonished to see bocks of stones
covered with beautiful impressions of what seemed to be leaves; how they got
there I could not imagine, but I picked up the broken bits, and even large
pieces, and brought them to my repository.”
So with just a year of education Mary
Somerville was transformed from an ordinary girl to a curious naturalist.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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