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SPECIAL EVENT

FAMILY DAY - "A DAY WITH ADELARD".

Led by Richard Phillips and Michael Davies

Satuday  28 June 2008 10.00am to 3.00pm

BRLSI is hosting a fun day for families dealing with one of Bath’s most illustrious early citizens on June 28th from 10.00am to 3:00pm. Adelard of Bath was born in Bath in 1075. As a young boy he saw Bath burned down during the civil war which followed the death of King William. In his twenties Adelard travelled the world from Spain to Syria, via Italy, Sicily and Greece, taught maths to King Henry II when Henry was a boy living in Bristol with his mother Queen Matilda, and played music for the royal court. But his most extraordinary achievement was in the field of maths. It is as a medieval mathematician that Adelard is renowned. It was Adelard (or Athelard) of Bath who was one of the academics who had responsibility for the introduction of Hindu/Arabic numerals and the concept of zero to the Western world.

Adelard was not a monk but rather a clerical scholar, because in the 11th and 12th centuries high level academic learning was not supervised by universities (which did not exist) but by various religious foundations. Adelard was educated at the Benedictine school set up by Bishop John of Tours who built the Norman Cathedral in Bath. As a lay member of the Benedictine Order he could travel freely and he was sent to Tours to complete his education. His first book De eodem et Diverso (`Of the Same and the Different') describes how he was walking one evening by the river Loire in Tours with his teacher who left him so that he could think things out for himself. He had a vision of Philosophy as a beautiful woman with her handmaidens, the Seven Liberal Arts. In this work Adelard uses a variety of literary techniques including allegory and poetry.

Adelard returned to Bath in 1106 and began to teach the children of the local nobility but it wasn’t long before he travelled to Laon in Spain to study techniques of the abacus with Ralph who taught a method used at the Exchequer. From Laon, Adelard travelled to the Middle East and particularly to Syria. While in the middle east it is probable that Adelard obtained the manuscript of the Elements of Euclid which he later translated from Arabic into Latin.

Representations of the Liberal Arts in stone reliefs in Chartres cathedral suggest that Adelard's Euclid was used by Thierry of Chartres to confirm his architectural designs for the rebuilding after the fire of 1145. A l4th-century Leiden manuscript of the Rules of the Abacus, carries a portrait of Adelard teaching his pupils. It is interesting that arabic numerals were used on 13th century statues at Wells. Little remains of the buildings Adelard would have known during his time in Bath except for the Norman chapel in the Abbey and the arched stonework of the King's Bath.

A panel at Bath Abbey museum quotes Adelard. "God rules the Universe but this does not mean that Man should not use the Reason with which God has endowed him to study Natural Causes". If readers of this newsletter could imagine modern science without a readily comprehensible system of numerals; art and architecture without geometry and the aesthetic symmetry of the Golden Section; astronomy without trigonometry, then they might understand the conceptual revolution led by Adelard, which provided scholars for generations with the means for further rational enquiry. They would also appreciate why many call Adelard of Bath the first English Scientist. So come along on June 28th with your family to a day set aside to celebrating the life and work of one of Bath’s most important sons. More details from twmthomas@hotmail.co.uk

Timeline of Adelard's Life