MacTutor
Thomas Heath
Times obituary
A MATHEMATICIAN AT THE TREASURY
The death of Sir Thomas Heath, Sc.D., F.R.S., who took place at Merry Hall, Ashtead, Surrey, on Saturday at the age of 78, removes one whose eminence in the field of Greek mathematics rather overshadowed his career in the Civil Service.
Heath was the acknowledged master of historians of ancient mathematics. His study of the subject was a very early enthusiasm. His first work, published in 1885, was a brilliant essay on "Diophantus of Alexandria." Apollonius was next to receive his attention, his edition of the "Treatise on Conic Sections," appearing in 1896. In 1897, Heath gave the world his great edition of the works of Archimedes, and when the lost work of that genius, "The Method," was discovered at Constantinople, Heath translated it. He also brought out Euclid's "Elements," and separately "Euclid in Greek," Book 1, which he himself regarded as a "pretty work." His researches are summed up in his masterly "History of Greek Mathematics," published in 1921, the most important sections of which were later condensed into a single volume; and in 1932, he published a series of translations bearing on Greek astronomy.
Thomas Little Heath was the third son of Mr. Samuel Heath of Thornton Curtis, Uleeby, Lincolnshire, and was born on October 5, 1861. He was educated at Caistor Grammar School and Clifton College. He went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, as a foundation scholar; in 1881 he took a first class in Part 1 of the Classical Tripos; he was twelfth Wrangler in 1882; and he took a first in Part II of the Classical Tripos in 1883. His college elected him to a Fellowship in 1885, and later to an honorary Fellowship.
Heath first passed in open competition for the Home Civil Service in 1884 and entered the Treasury in the same year. By successive stages, he reached the position of Assistant Secretary in 1907, and in 1913 was appointed jointly with Sir John (afterwards Lord) Bradbury to the office of Permanent Secretary to the Treasury and Auditor of the Civil List. He held these posts until 1919. Heath was responsible more for the administrative, and his colleague more for the purely financial side side of the Department.
Heath was an admirable example of the older type of civil servant. His courage and honesty were beyond question; his technique was perfect; but his mind was not, perhaps, sufficiently pliable or fertile in ideas to adapt itself readily to the conditions which between 1914 and 1918 had upset every kind of pre-conceived notions of the desk and paper man, such as he really was. So when, in 1919, Sir Warren Fisher assumed office as sole Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, Heath became Comptroller of the National Debt Office, which post he held until his retirement in 1926. In his interesting little book on changes he had witnessed in 1927, he described the many changes he had witnessed in his long career.
Heath served as president of the Mathematical Association in 1922. He was a fellow of the Royal Society and had been on its council, and a Fellow of the British Academy. He was one of the Cambridge Commissioners under the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge Act, 1923, and he was a member of the Royal Commission on National Museums, Museums, and Galleries in 1927. He was created a C.B. in 1903, a K.C.B. in 1909, and a K.C.V.O. in 1916.
An interest in music and mountaineering occupied his leisure time, and he had made most of his principal ascents in the Dolomites. He married, in 1914, Ada Mary, daughter of Major E. C. Thomas, herself an accomplished musician of professional standing, and a sister-in-law of Sir Warren Fisher. They had a son and a daughter.
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In the Name of Pythagoras
The mathematicians of Greece have appealed to the mathematicians of all countries on behalf of their own, the birthplace of mathematics. Just as their appeal is, there is something of a novelty about it, for it is not always remembered that the Greeks, who conferred many gifts upon the world, were also the founders of mathematics, and that their mathematical books are still worth studying for the neatness and precision of the thought expressed in them. Certainly, "the country of Pythagoras, Plato, Euclid, Archimedes, and Apollonius" has no reason to rank these geniuses lower than its sculptors and men of letters, or to be less proud of them. They and the musicians—since the Greeks, unlike the moderns, had no foreign languages to learn—were the educators of Greek youth; to be unmusical and unemometrical was another name for being uneducated Readers of Plato know well how much mathematical thought, sometimes of the hardest kind, pervades the dialogues. Euclid, it is true, is no longer the European school-book that he used to be; but he and Archimedes and Apollonius are accessible to English readers through the labors of the late Sir Thomas Heath of the Treasury; and the discoveries of Archimedes are known in far wider circles than those of professed mathematicians. The story of his ingenious inventions in defense of Syracuse (which still preserves his statue) is notorious; and his death at the hand of a Roman soldier, while he was doing a problem, is a classic among the records of the ends of philosophers, and, it may be added, of the triumphs of brute violence over intellect.
"He had a great respect for the truths of mathematics." was written by a certain philosopher not long deceased. To an ancient Greek, such a comment on a philosopher would have seemed meaningless, so much were mathematics a part of his mental equipment. On the other hand, the Greek mathematicians on the whole tended to pursue their studies for philosophical, rather than practical, reasons. Discovery for the sake of improving the material lot of man was less to their taste than the search for abstract intellectual results. It has been argued that this is one of the reasons why Greek science did not progress as far as it might have progressed; the intelligence was there, and the desire to find out the truth was there; but these virtues were held in check by a hesitation to promote the application of theoretical gains to everyday life. There is no such hesitation now, for the brains of modern science are all for promoting man's direct profit or discomfort. The Greeks had no such suspicion, as Bacon had, centuries later, of the possibility that science, or as he called it knowledge, might be used against the better interests of humanity. It must be governed in charity, he stipulated; otherwise he seems to have divined that the fruits of his new method, in reckless hands, might be anything but a blessing. The Greeks had no such misgivings; their science was pure: their men of science were as saints of the intellect, not devisers of devilries; educators of the common man, whose thoughts they raised above the things of the earth. So much even that frivolous Roman Ovid recognized, when in one of his rarer moments of seriousness he extolled the astronomers for their spirituality and disinterestedness,
A MATHEMATICIAN AT THE TREASURY
The death of Sir Thomas Heath, Sc.D., F.R.S., who took place at Merry Hall, Ashtead, Surrey, on Saturday at the age of 78, removes one whose eminence in the field of Greek mathematics rather overshadowed his career in the Civil Service.
Heath was the acknowledged master of historians of ancient mathematics. His study of the subject was a very early enthusiasm. His first work, published in 1885, was a brilliant essay on "Diophantus of Alexandria." Apollonius was next to receive his attention, his edition of the "Treatise on Conic Sections," appearing in 1896. In 1897, Heath gave the world his great edition of the works of Archimedes, and when the lost work of that genius, "The Method," was discovered at Constantinople, Heath translated it. He also brought out Euclid's "Elements," and separately "Euclid in Greek," Book 1, which he himself regarded as a "pretty work." His researches are summed up in his masterly "History of Greek Mathematics," published in 1921, the most important sections of which were later condensed into a single volume; and in 1932, he published a series of translations bearing on Greek astronomy.
Thomas Little Heath was the third son of Mr. Samuel Heath of Thornton Curtis, Uleeby, Lincolnshire, and was born on October 5, 1861. He was educated at Caistor Grammar School and Clifton College. He went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, as a foundation scholar; in 1881 he took a first class in Part 1 of the Classical Tripos; he was twelfth Wrangler in 1882; and he took a first in Part II of the Classical Tripos in 1883. His college elected him to a Fellowship in 1885, and later to an honorary Fellowship.
Heath first passed in open competition for the Home Civil Service in 1884 and entered the Treasury in the same year. By successive stages, he reached the position of Assistant Secretary in 1907, and in 1913 was appointed jointly with Sir John (afterwards Lord) Bradbury to the office of Permanent Secretary to the Treasury and Auditor of the Civil List. He held these posts until 1919. Heath was responsible more for the administrative, and his colleague more for the purely financial side side of the Department.
Heath was an admirable example of the older type of civil servant. His courage and honesty were beyond question; his technique was perfect; but his mind was not, perhaps, sufficiently pliable or fertile in ideas to adapt itself readily to the conditions which between 1914 and 1918 had upset every kind of pre-conceived notions of the desk and paper man, such as he really was. So when, in 1919, Sir Warren Fisher assumed office as sole Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, Heath became Comptroller of the National Debt Office, which post he held until his retirement in 1926. In his interesting little book on changes he had witnessed in 1927, he described the many changes he had witnessed in his long career.
Heath served as president of the Mathematical Association in 1922. He was a fellow of the Royal Society and had been on its council, and a Fellow of the British Academy. He was one of the Cambridge Commissioners under the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge Act, 1923, and he was a member of the Royal Commission on National Museums, Museums, and Galleries in 1927. He was created a C.B. in 1903, a K.C.B. in 1909, and a K.C.V.O. in 1916.
An interest in music and mountaineering occupied his leisure time, and he had made most of his principal ascents in the Dolomites. He married, in 1914, Ada Mary, daughter of Major E. C. Thomas, herself an accomplished musician of professional standing, and a sister-in-law of Sir Warren Fisher. They had a son and a daughter.
_______________________________________________________
In the Name of Pythagoras
The mathematicians of Greece have appealed to the mathematicians of all countries on behalf of their own, the birthplace of mathematics. Just as their appeal is, there is something of a novelty about it, for it is not always remembered that the Greeks, who conferred many gifts upon the world, were also the founders of mathematics, and that their mathematical books are still worth studying for the neatness and precision of the thought expressed in them. Certainly, "the country of Pythagoras, Plato, Euclid, Archimedes, and Apollonius" has no reason to rank these geniuses lower than its sculptors and men of letters, or to be less proud of them. They and the musicians—since the Greeks, unlike the moderns, had no foreign languages to learn—were the educators of Greek youth; to be unmusical and unemometrical was another name for being uneducated Readers of Plato know well how much mathematical thought, sometimes of the hardest kind, pervades the dialogues. Euclid, it is true, is no longer the European school-book that he used to be; but he and Archimedes and Apollonius are accessible to English readers through the labors of the late Sir Thomas Heath of the Treasury; and the discoveries of Archimedes are known in far wider circles than those of professed mathematicians. The story of his ingenious inventions in defense of Syracuse (which still preserves his statue) is notorious; and his death at the hand of a Roman soldier, while he was doing a problem, is a classic among the records of the ends of philosophers, and, it may be added, of the triumphs of brute violence over intellect.
"He had a great respect for the truths of mathematics." was written by a certain philosopher not long deceased. To an ancient Greek, such a comment on a philosopher would have seemed meaningless, so much were mathematics a part of his mental equipment. On the other hand, the Greek mathematicians on the whole tended to pursue their studies for philosophical, rather than practical, reasons. Discovery for the sake of improving the material lot of man was less to their taste than the search for abstract intellectual results. It has been argued that this is one of the reasons why Greek science did not progress as far as it might have progressed; the intelligence was there, and the desire to find out the truth was there; but these virtues were held in check by a hesitation to promote the application of theoretical gains to everyday life. There is no such hesitation now, for the brains of modern science are all for promoting man's direct profit or discomfort. The Greeks had no such suspicion, as Bacon had, centuries later, of the possibility that science, or as he called it knowledge, might be used against the better interests of humanity. It must be governed in charity, he stipulated; otherwise he seems to have divined that the fruits of his new method, in reckless hands, might be anything but a blessing. The Greeks had no such misgivings; their science was pure: their men of science were as saints of the intellect, not devisers of devilries; educators of the common man, whose thoughts they raised above the things of the earth. So much even that frivolous Roman Ovid recognized, when in one of his rarer moments of seriousness he extolled the astronomers for their spirituality and disinterestedness,
