Since due recognition is now being more and more widely given to the importance of Vector Analysis for three-dimensional work in mechanics, geometry and mathematical physics, the time is opportune to consider the place which that subject merits in a University degree course. A student who undertakes anything like research work in applied subjects is considerably handicapped if he has had no training in Vector Analysis; but the need for it is felt much earlier than the stage at which research is generally begun. Every University course contains subjects which are less useful than Vector Analysis; and on the ground of utility alone there is no question that the latter deserves a place in the curriculum. It will, however, be found quite unnecessary to displace anything else, because the time occupied in teaching the essential parts of vector algebra and calculus will be saved, even during a three years’ course, by the application of this method to the three-dimensional parts of mechanics and mathematical physics.

With his unaided faculties, a man is comparatively limited in performance. His vision, hearing and legs operate only over small distances, he cannot lift very heavy weights nor weave much cloth in an hour. But by making use of devices such as the aeroplane, the telephone, and the powered loom, he can exploit natural properties and forces, and thereby attain what is literally a superhuman standard of performance in all kinds of activities.

In technical colleges one is often called upon to introduce advanced mathematical techniques to students whose background is not very extensive. Such a method is the use of the Laplace Transform for the solution of linear differential equations with constant coefficients. Textbooks which deal with this topic, even those specifically written for engineers, derive the transform from the Fourier Integral, or from Heaviside’s Operational Calculus, or just brusquely define the process. Then certain standard forms are evaluated, the rules for application to differential equations are laid down and a selection of worked examples follows. But such a treatment can mystify a student who wants to know why, in following these rules, he should, in effect, firstly, multiply each term of the equation by e-px, secondly, integrate the resultant products from 0 to ∞, and, thirdly, obtain in this way the complete solution.

Which is your favourite formula in triangle geometry? Mine is definitely the formula for the area of triangle OIH . It is well known that the perpendicular bisectors to the sides of any triangle are concurrent at a point O (centre of the circumcircle), that the angle bisectors to the vertex angles are concurrent at a point I (centre of the incircle), and that the altitudes are concurrent at a point H. If the triangle is not isosceles, then these three points are all different and uniquely determine a new triangle OIH (see Figure 1), whose area can be expressed in terms of the sides a, b, c of the original triangle. I derived such a formula 20 years ago, and later found out that it had been studied a century earlier.

Prodigiously talented with a remarkable flair for anticipating correct results and initiating fruitful areas of research, Stanislaw Ulam (‘Stan’ to his friends) was an unusual mathematician. The considerable breadth of his preoccupations, even in the halcyon days of his youth in Poland, distinguished him from his peers. Sustained by a supreme self-confidence, Ulam preferred pioneering new fields of mathematics to elaborating the ideas of others. Indeed, impatient with detail he tended to leave technicalities to those with whom he collaborated. Uprooted from his native Poland in his twenties, Ulam was to spend two thirds of his working life associated with or employed by the Los Alamos National Laboratory.