Mathematics with Love. The Courtship Correspondence of Barnes Wallis, Inventor of the Bouncing Bomb
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Author(s): M. Stopes-Roe
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1403944989
Format: hardback
362pp
Price: £16.99
Review Date: 14 June 2005
Review: In 1922 Barnes Wallace met his cousin Molly Bloxham for the first time; Molly was 17 and Barnes was 35. Molly’s father pronounced that the two of them could correspond only if Barnes taught Molly mathematics. In the autumn of that year Barnes wrote his first lesson in mathematics to his cousin. This volume contains the correspondence – a mixture of maths and emotion, compiled by their daughter, Mary. Barnes Wallace used trigonometry and calculus to woo Molly in a delightful and appealing correspondence. “Calculus is an art – it endows you with wonderful powers; you can let your imagination go to all sorts of lengths and not pass out of the realm of reality. Calculus is like chocolate meringues – elementary trig is like very thick stale bread and margarine.” The 250 letters from which the book has been taken span from this first meeting to their marriage in April 1925, a marriage that was to last over 50 years.