Mathematics

During the General Strike of 1926, and so as not to miss his first day at Sherborne School, a student rode 60 miles on his bicycle, stopping overnight at an inn.

The philosopher Bertrand Russell said of Mathematics: 'Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth but supreme beauty- a beauty cold and austere, like that of a sculpture,..., without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.'

To study Mathematics at Sherborne School is to begin to appreciate the true place of the subject at the very heart of the school curriculum, that it does indeed possess 'supreme beauty' and that students achieve success by a combination of hard work and insight.

Students take the IGCSE Mathematics examinations in the Fifth Form with some taking a further qualification for the purposes of enrichment. In the Senior School, well over half of Lower Sixth Form boys take some form of Mathematics at either A level or the IB. There are currently over 50 boys studying Further Mathematics or Higher level IB Mathematics.

Many students enter Mathematics competitions and attend lectures and presentations throughout the year. There is a rigorous programme of extra help for students whose experience of Mathematics is still 'cold and austere' rather than 'sublimely pure'.

And finally, that student of whom Norman Tebbit would have been proud? Alan Turing, a man whose determination to unleash the awesome power of Mathematics on Nazi Germany probably foreshortened the Second World War, and a man whose subsequent treatment by the government of the time was so appalling as to elicit a public apology from Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2009.

Tim Dawson BSc MA
Head of Mathematics