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Is there such a thing as Irish mathematics, as opposed to mathematics which happens to have been done in Ireland or by thoseborn in Ireland? Certainly, Ireland in the nineteenth century was in one of its mathematically richest phases, with such men as William Rowan Hamilton, James MacCullagh, George Salmon, and George Fitzgerald to inspire generations of students and researchers, as well as exporting to England such talented mathematicians as Kelvin, Stokes and Larmor. This paper seeks to explore, through examining the mathematics taught and researched, whether the category of ‘Irish mathematics’ is one that makes sense for this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, based on a project funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council considering how people position themselves in relation to popular representations of mathematics and mathematicians, we explore constructions of mathematicians in popular culture and the ways learners make meanings from these. Drawing on an analysis of popular cultural texts, we argue that popular discourses overwhelmingly construct mathematicians as white, heterosexual, middle-class men, yet also construct them as 'other' through systems of binary oppositions between those doing and those not doing mathematics. Turning to the analysis of a corpus of 27 focus groups with school and university students in England and Wales, we explore how such images are deployed by learners. We argue that while learners' views of mathematicians parallel in key ways popular discourses, they are not passively absorbing these as they are simultaneously aware of the cliched nature of popular cultural images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an overview of the life and work of Leonhard Euler (1707-83). During 2007 Euler's tercentenary was celebrated by mathematicians around the world. The Open University Centre for the History of the Mathematical Sciences and the BSHM marked the occasion with a meeting in Oxford in June 2007 on Euler's mathematical legacy. Three of the lectures from that meeting have been reproduced in this issue of the Bulletin, beginning here with the opening talk from Jeremy Gray. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]