Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics: Volume 1 (Cambridge University Press)

When George Shoobridge Carr (1837–1914) wrote his Synopsis of Elementary Results he intended it as an aid to students preparing for degree-level examinations such as the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos, for which he provided private tuition. He would have been startled to see the two volumes, first published in 1880 and 1886 respectively, reissued more than a century later. Notably, in 1903 the work fell into the hands of the Indian prodigy Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920) and greatly influenced his mathematical education. It is the interaction between a methodical teaching aid and the soaring spirit of a self-taught genius which gives this reissue its interest. Volume 1, presented here in its 1886 printing, contains sections on mathematical tables, algebra, the theory of equations, plane trigonometry, spherical trigonometry, elementary geometry and geometrical conics.