THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS
http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/bshm/
David Singmaster
SCISM 87 Rodenhurst Road
South Bank University London, SW4 8AF, England
London, SE1 0AA, England Tel/fax: 0181-674 3676
Tel: 0171-815 7411
Fax: 0171-815 7499
E-mail: ZINGMAST @ SBU.AC.UK Tuesday, 5 January 1999
TO: All persons named on later pages and any one else
interested.
I am proposing to send the attached letter to Chris Smith.
Please circulate it widely among interested persons - I do not
have fax or email addresses of everyone listed. If you would
like your signature on the letter, please let me know as soon
as possible. I may well have to send it on Thursday as the
books may still be in this country. In that case, let me
encourage you to send a letter to Chris Smith directly. I
would still like to gather signatures as it might be
appropriate to send this as a letter to the Times, THES and the
Telegraph.
...............................................................
TO: Rt. Hon. Chris Smith, Secretary of State for Media,
Culture and Sport
CC: Alan Howarth, MP; David Blunkett, MP;
Peter Ainsworth, MP.
We are dismayed at Keele University's hasty and ill-
advised sale of the Turner Collection of old mathematical and
scientific books. We agree with the British Library that "this
represented one of the most important research resources in its
field outside London, Oxford and Cambridge." Besides being a
research collection of national and international interest, it
contains several items of national heritage importance. It
contains 8 books which belonged to Isaac Newton, the only group
of these outside Trinity College Cambridge, as well as a page
out of a manuscript which is at Trinity College Cambridge. It
also includes a book from the library of Charles I.
"The dispersal of the collection, or its loss to this
country as a research resource, would be a matter of profound
regret both to the British Library and to the wider library and
research communities."
The collection has been acquired by the London dealer
Simon Finch, who has applied for Export Licences on some of the
items in the Collection, but we do not know the outcome of this
process. There does not seem to be any way the public can find
out when a book or a collection of national importance is being
exported or for any UK institution other than the British
Library to object.
The Export Licence Unit has said that there is no
provision for objecting to the export of a collection of items.
The British Library voiced its objections to the export of the
collection and we agree that the collection is much more than
the individual items in it. The present interpretation would
permit the export of the Lewes Chessmen as a collection of
single items or of a Gutenberg Bible as a collection of pages.
Since it is possible that the books are still in this
country, we urgently request you to examine the decision of the
export review board and suspend the export of all of these
books pending an offer from a UK buyer.
In the longer run, we urge the Government
- to require public institutions selling assets of national
importance to do so publicly so that other UK institutions have
the opportunity to keep them in the UK;
- to open up the export licencing process to public scrutiny;
- to permit the export licencing process to consider a
collection as a whole when appropriate.
Sincerely,
................................................................................
Nicolas Barker. Editor, The Book Collector.
Alan Bell. Librarian, The London Library.
Tony Benn, MP.
Norman Biggs. Librarian of the London Mathematical Society.
Piers Corbyn (for Jeremy Corbyn, MP).
Ruth Eagle. Department of Education, Keele University.
John Fauvel. Editor, British Society for the History of
Mathematics Newsletter.
J. V. Field. President, British Society for the History of
Mathematics.
Colin Franklin. Culham Books.
Tony Gardiner. Past Presidnet, The Mathematical Association.
Ivor Grattan-Guinness. Professor of the History of
Mathematics, Middlesex University.
Adam Hart-Davis.
William Hartston. The Daily Express.
Lord Roy Hattersley, House of Lords.
Ian Hislop. Private Eye.
Clive Hurst. Curator of Rare Books, The Bodleian Library.
David Ingram. Retired Professor of Physics, Keele University.
Richard Ingrams. The Oldie.
Mervyn Janetta. Curator, The British Library.
Graham Jefcoate. Curator of Early Printed Books, The British
Library.
Bryan Jenkins. Curator of Rare Books, Cambridge University
Library.
Desmond King-Hele, FRS. Chairman of the BL Advisory Board on
History of Science and Technology.
David McKitterick. Wren Librarian, Trinity College Cambridge.
Mary Nixon. Librarian, The Royal Society.
Douglas Quinney. Department of Mathematics, Keele University.
G. A. J. Rogers. Editor, British Journal for the History of
Philosophy and Professor of Philosophy, Keele University.
Phil Rogers. Rogers Turner.
Simon Singh.
Hugh Torrens. Professor of the History of Science, Keele
University.
Tom Whiteside, FRS, FBA, Professor of the History of
Mathematics, Cambridge and editor of Newton's mathematical
papers.
Association of Teachers of Mathematics.
British Association for the Advancement of Science.
Institute of Mathematics and Its Applications.
Institute of Physics. Also: Pippa Senior, Public Affairs
Manager.
London Mathematical Society.
Mathematical Association.
Museum of the History of Science, Oxford.
DAVID SINGMASTER, Professor of Mathematics and Metagrobologist
School of Computing, Information Systems and Mathematics
Southbank University, London, SE1 0AA, UK.
Tel: 0171-815 7411; fax: 0171-815 7499;
email: zingmast or David.Singmaster @sbu.ac.uk
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