... was a very clever child, and at the age of six preferred reading books to playing games.

His abilities were in evidence at a precocious age since by the age of nine he was delivering lectures to his family on Sunday evenings.

Glaisher, I believe, once said that no subject loses more than mathematics by any attempt to dissociate it from its history. It is still customary, however, in schools and most universities to regard the history of mathematics as an "extra" outside the ordinary student's syllabus - indeed it is usually treated as an exotic luxury. The point I would like to emphasise is that while the primary aim of the tyro should be the mastery of technique, yet in most cases this mastery is liable to become a mere mechanical acquirement unless it is accompanied by some appreciation of the cultural significance of the "Queen of the Sciences". A number of excellent treatises, theses and textbooks have been written on mathematical history. With very few exceptions these are absolutely distinct from the technical treatises, theses and textbooks. Today we really require a series of books carefully planned to bridge the gap between these two classes - books not designed to usurp the functions of any particular books now in use but to supplement them.

In a previous article I have outlined my conception of the role of history in the exposition of mathematical technique. In this article I attempt to provide my bare thesis with a respectable clothing of practicability. The treatment of Number and Continuity which follows is a short and very sketchy historical supplement to the technical treatment of the same subjects in, say, the earlier chapters of Hardy's 'Pure Mathematics'.

In a recent paper Narliker has given a new derivation of the Lorentz formulae of special relativity. It may therefore not be inopportune to communicate the present note which gives a derivation of the Lorentz formulae from a different starting-point. The considerations underlying the derivation are of a more physical character.

His work was on defence research, including ballistics, and he worked at Fort Halstead (near Sevenoaks) and Cambridge. While in his Portugal Street digs in Cambridge, he had a lucky escape when they were destroyed during the only bombing raid on the city.

... and Magda lived first in Battersea and from 1967 in Wimbledon. The marriage was remarkably happy and their house a hospitable location for students, friends and colleagues to meet, talk and eat.

Historians and philosophers of science may perhaps look to Dr Whitrow's book to provide an account of the present state of the purely scientific side of his subject, rather than to contribute to their own special fields. It may be said at once that he has given a brilliant description of the astronomical evidence concerning the structure, behaviour and ages of the galaxies and concerning the structure of the whole system of galaxies that constitutes the observable universe. He has given also an extraordinarily able (non-mathematical) description of current general cosmological theory, with special prominence for the ideas of Eddington and Milne, together with some account of more detailed matters such as galactic kinematics and dynamics.

Dr Whitrow is, however, particularly well qualified to write also upon both the historical and philosophical aspects of his subject: readers specially interested in these aspects will be glad to find that his presentation keeps them so well in view. In fact, even the professional historian of science will get a fresh perspective in his own domain from the material brought together by the author in his first three chapters, which give a historical account of the exploration of the universe and of ideas of space and time.

... the conveyance of some notion of Einstein's scientific achievements to a large and heterogeneous audience. This little book is not notably successful as an attempt to popularise science. Despite the evident efforts of Drs Whitrow, Sciama and Bonnor, who prepared the summary statements, their necessarily extremely abbreviated accounts can carry no very clear idea of Einstein's work to those unacquainted with relativity and quantum theory. The popularisation of modern physics presents very severe difficulties, and it would appear both ungrateful and unfair to fault those who respond to the challenge for failing to resolve them all. Yet one may well ask whether attempts like these broadcasts do not achieve precisely the opposite of the objective they seek. Over-compression in explaining relativity and quantum physics to the non-physicist may tend more to enhance than to dispel their mystery.

But it was not only in research and writing that Whitrow brought credit to the college. He was an excellent lecturer, with his clear intonation matched by clarity of exposition. Furthermore, he took part in the running of the college and university, serving on a number of committees. Between 1972 and 1974 he was College Orator, where his knowledge of Latin was put to good use.

... is given every two years by a distinguished and eloquent speaker on any topic in cosmology, including its philosophy. The speaker may be based in the UK or overseas. The lecture is delivered at an Ordinary (A&G) Meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society.

He was elected a member of the Royal Astronomical Society monthly Dining Club on 13 January 1950 and two years later became its Treasurer (that is, its Executive Officer), a post he held until 1970, a record equalled only by George Dollond (1774-1852). In this capacity Whitrow edited the third volume of the Records of the Club. Serving as President between 1978 and 1986, in total he attended 347 dinners, failing by just three to equal the record set by James Glaisher (1848-1928). At the Club's dinner held during the IAU last year in Manchester, those present drank a silent toast to his memory.

In 1948 a group of historians, philosophers and scientists met at the University College London to discuss the formation of a Philosophy of Science Group. A Provisional Committee consisting of Alistair Crombie, Herbert Dingle, Karl Popper, F I G Rawlins, and Gerald Whitrow met to formulate the statement of aims, writing, "The purpose of the Group is to study the logic and method of science as well as of the various special sciences, including the social sciences. The main emphasis is upon an approach through the various special sciences to the philosophy of science." The Group was originally approved as a group affiliated with British Society for the History of Science, and the first annual meeting was held on 15 November 1948 at University College London. In January of 1959 the Philosophy of Science Group was reconstituted as the British Society for the Philosophy of Science ...

... approached Gerald Whitrow, who gave his enthusiastic support and agreed to chair this exploratory meeting. This took place at Thames Polytechnic [now the University of Greenwich] on 2 July 1971 with, to the surprise and delight of the organisers, over fifty participants.

The question in the title of this paper is, according to the author, "one of the great puzzles in the history of mathematics." He points to the novel art of printing, used by Regiomontanus and Pacioli (who was influenced by Leonardo Fibonacci), to the impact made by Cardan's "Ars magna" and the work of Viète, setting algebra "on the path by which it eventually supplanted geometry." Since the author hardly mentions the many demands of the traders, bankers, surveyors, engineers and navigators in the flourishing mercantile towns, it is no wonder that he concludes that "why sixteenth century mathematics should have this remarkable outcome instead of petering out is far from clear."

Newton has often been ranked with Archimedes and Gauss as one of the three greatest mathematicians of all time. Like them he was equally outstanding in both pure and applied mathematics. Also like them he had an insatiable love of making lengthy numerical computations. For example, in the intoxication of youth he calculated several logarithms to 55 places! He and Gauss also resembled each other in their reluctance to publish. There was no public cry of 'Eureka!' from either of them.

Newton's role in the history of mathematics was to be the outstanding successor to Descartes. The expression of a curve by its algebraic equation, an idea which we owe to the great Frenchman, led Newton to the wider concept of the explicit function of a single variable, as the result of a technique which disentangled the two coordinates from their implicit equation and exhibited the one as a function of the other in a finite or infinite series. The generality and efficiency of this mathematical process is essentially due to Newton. The first of the fundamental discoveries by which he transformed mathematics was that of expansion into infinite series and his recognition of the validity of this way of expressing a function, first revealed to him as early as 1664 in his binomial theorem. He fully understood the need for a proof of convergence, even if he did not quite attain modern standards of rigour.

His next major advance was to recognise that quadrature (or integration) and tangency (generalised as differentiation) are inverse operations. The ingenious ad hoc geometrical methods of his predecessors were thus replaced by purely analytical techniques of wide-ranging application. But his crowning achievement was the mathematical theory of universal gravitation presented in the 'Principia'. Its publication just 300 years ago, on 5 July 1687, inaugurated the fundamental branch of science which we now call mathematical physics.

A moving memorial service was held at Holy Trinity Church, Prince Consort Road, where colleagues and former students paid tribute to his memory. Whitrow was a man of complete integrity, who was always totally dedicated to whatever he had in hand and courteous to a fault. His memory was prodigious and he could, until his last few weeks, recollect events of 60 years before (such as the 1931 Congress) with astonishing clarity. He will be sadly missed by friends and colleagues from many academic disciplines.