The Annual Meeting of the Mathematical Association was held at the London Day Training College, Southampton Row, W.C., on Saturday, 9th January, 1915, at 2.30 p.m.

The President, Sir George Greenhill, F.R.S., was in the chair.

The past year has been one of comparative inactivity. The new Committee did not come into office until May, so that no work of importance was possible before the mid-summer vacation. Since that time, owing to the outbreak of the war, the conditions have not seemed suitable for entering upon any work of an important or controversial character. The Committee is now considering what work it can most fittingly undertake under existing circumstances.

Four meetings of the Committee have been held during the year. A circular has been sent to the Senior Mathematical Master of each of the Public Schools, asking whether he desires that all boys entering his school should be acquainted with the same method for the multiplication and division of decimals, and if so, whether he is in favour of the methods given in the circular. The investigation has been completed, and the result is being sent to the General Committee.

The Report of the “Other Secondary Schools” Special Committee was published in the Mathematical Gazette of January, 1914, page 231. Since that time the re-constituted Committee, which fully endorses the Eeport, has held only two meetings. In view of the fact that the London University has not yet modified its Matriculation Syllabus in Mathematics, the Committee feels that a wider circulation of the Report is most desirable.

This Committee has met three times during the year, and the sub-committee appointed by it has met twice. It has elected as its Chairman, Miss Gwatkin, and as its Secretary, Miss Punnett. One member has been co-opted—Miss Waters of the Bromley County Secondary School.

The Mathematical Gazette has commenced a series of articles, adapted for the use of school-teachers, on the great mathematicians of former days. No series of the kind could be complete were Pythagoras omitted, for it was he who raised mathematics to the rank of a science, made it a part of liberal education, and evolved a scheme on which it continued to be studied in Europe for more than 2000 years. But though his claim to inclusion is indisputable, the materials for describing his work are sadly lacking. We have a treatise by Aristotle on Pythagorean teaching, but the biography by the wife of Pythagoras is lost, and only fragments of the sketches by Aristoxenus, Dikaiarchus, and Philolaus exist, while the memoirs by Laertius Diogenes, Iamblichus, and Porphyry, on which we have mainly to rely for personal details, are late and include much that is palpably untrue. The reputation of Pythagoras far exceeded that of any of his contemporaries, and so great was it that in the credulous ages miracles and magical feats were freely attributed to him; later these additions tended to make men go to the other extreme, and doubt the truth of everything written about him. Within recent years, however, the available materials have been subjected to critical examination, and the researches of T. Gomperz of Vienna, J. Burnet of St. Andrews, G. J. Allman of Dublin, and P. Tannery of Paris enable us to speak with more confidence than was formerly possible.

In England the sceptre of Mathematics passed from the hands of Wallis to the man who was to raise the exact sciences to a height hitherto unattained—Isaac Newton (1642-1727), that sovereign genius before whom the world of science will ever bow with the profoundest reverence.

In view of the recent discussions and papers in the Gazette, it may not be out of place for me to sketch the methods by which the Calculus is approached in my lectures. The class includes not only students qualifying for a degree in mathematics, but also others requiring a working knowledge of the use of the Calculus for the purposes of their courses in physics and chemistry.