Was it unusual for people in those days to learn Calculus? Could a grad student take a course in differential equations or multi-variable Calculus, or did they have to learn from journals? I am always amazed with famous people like Riemann. I tried to get a grasp of analytic number theory, but it's just too hard.
How much math education was typical in the 18th & 19th century?
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3As a note: archives of old Tripos examinations might give a clue as to what was expected of students in the olden days... – 2012-02-13
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6I get the impression that today, calculus plays the same role that Greek did in Britain in that era. They wanted to keep the riffraff from being, e.g., military officers, so they required them to know Greek. Today, premeds in the University of California system have to take calculus-based physics. Ca. 1900, doctors in California didn't typically have college degrees at all. Vector calculus wasn't invented until ca. 1850, and the modern notation didn't exist until the 20th century. Einstein's 1905 paper on relativity doesn't use div, grad, or curl, making it horrible for modern readers to read. – 2012-02-13