A Brill Calendar: January 27

Charles Dodgson: Mathematician

Few scientists and scholars – let alone mathematicians – reach an everlasting, world-wide readership, ranging from observers of the human mind to enchanted children.

One of these elite is the singular Englishman Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Daresbury, Cheshire, January 27, 1832 – Guildford, Surrey, January 14, 1898); better known to his contemporaries and posterity, under his pseudonym, Lewis Carroll. Dodgson used that ‘nom de plume’ for the first time when he published the poem ‘Solitude’ in 1856; by rendering ‘Charles Lutwidge’ into Latin as ‘Carolus Ludovicus’, changing the name-order next, and translating them finally back into English.

The ultimate works of his genius are, of course, ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ (1865), its sequel, ‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1871) and last, but by no means least, ‘The Hunting of the Snark’ (1883). The bibliography on this bachelor with a bad stammer, who lived and lectured, wrote and photographed almost half his life – from 1851 until 1881 – within the Academic shelter Christ Church College in Oxford provides to its inmates, is vast. Even casual perusal of it demonstrates that Dodgson’s sophisticated habitat, a boisterous urban setting in which students and scholars, lecturers and dons take active part, provided the necessary conditions for the origins of a unique oeuvre. Universities – the one in Leyden not excepted – generate many more cultural benefits than mere academic education and scholarly achievement.

Charles L. Dodgson’s scholarly ‘Euclid and His Modern Rivals’ (1879) is of limited interest to mathematicians 130 years later like much of his scientific work; but his literature delights children of all ages.