RAS SHANGHAI WEEKENDER – Ian Gow on “Scottish Shanghailander” Alexander Wylie – 12/1/13

Posted: January 11th, 2013 | No Comments »

  RAS SHANGHAI WEEKENDER

 on  

Alexander Wylie 1815-1887,

“Scottish Shanghailander:

Missionary, Man of Letters, Mathematician”

Saturday 12th January 2013

4pm for 4.30pm start

RAS Library at the Sino-British College

1195 Fuxing Zhong Lu

 

Alexander Wylie was one of the leading members of a unique concentration of Missionary Scholars and Translators who lived and worked in Shanghai in the second half of the 19th Century. He was one of the founders of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (NCBRAS) later a Vice President and finally an Honorary Member. Wylie was also a key figure in the development of the NCBRAS Library and his collection of nearly 800 volumes helped to make this library one of the finest in Asia. In addition The Wylie Collection forms the cornerstone of the Bodleian Library’s China Collection at Oxford.

Originally hired as a printer for the London Missionary Society Press in Shanghai, Wylie is a scholar still extensively cited today in the fields of missionary history, archaeology, astronomy, numismatics and pre-modern Chinese literature. He also produced major annotated bibliographic publications. However, his most remarkable contributions related to the fields of mathematics and the history of mathematics. Wylie was the first translator into Chinese of the last nine volumes of Euclid, Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica and Calculus. He also, by a series of remarkable articles, showed, that the conventional wisdom that China had no significant achievement in mathematics until after the Jesuits, was wrong and that pre-modern Chinese mathematics was on a par and even developed certain mathematical techniques that preceded Europe by hundreds of years.

Despite all these achievements and despite being cited widely in all these fields, there is no major article or journal about this outstanding scholar in English. There is however, a significant and growing literature in Chinese where he is rightly regarded as one of the fathers of Chinese mathematics and the history of Chinese mathematics.

Professor Ian Gow, OBE is Executive President of the Sino-British University College in Shanghai – a major joint venture between nine UK universities and the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology. He was the Founding Provost of China’s first independent foreign university campus since the reopening of China, the multi-award winning University of Nottingham, Ningbo. Professor Gow has held numerous senior executive positions in UK higher education and has served as a Vice President (pro-Vice Chancellor) of four UK universities (Stirling, Sheffield, Nottingham and the West of England). He was awarded the OBE for his services to UK Higher Education in China and also holds awards from Ningbo City and Zhejiang Provincial Government for his contributions in education.  He is an internationally recognized East Asia specialist with a PhD in Japanese Studies and has published extensively on Japanese politics and international relations.

RSVP: to RAS Bookings at: bookings@royalasiaticsociety.org.cn

PRIORITY BOOKING for Members until Thursday 10th January 2013

ENTRANCE: 30 rmb (RAS members) and 80 rmb (non-members).  Includes one drink

MEMBERSHIP applications and membership renewals will be available at this event.

RAS MONOGRAPHS – Series 1 & 2 will be available for sale at this event. 100 rmb each (cash sale only)

WEBSITE: www.royalasiaticsociety.org.cn

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