Greenwich rated in the Top 4 for Mathematics

Flamstead House, The Royal Observatory

The School of Mathematics and Computer Science is an extremely sucessful part of the University and is recognised both nationally and internationaly for its cutting edge research and innovative approach to curriculum development. Students from the School have achieved top grade positions in many of the leading large employers such as Microsoft, IBM, Morgan Stanley, British Telecom and Oracle. The Computer Department is top of the league tables for satisfaction amongst computing students, according to the latest subject comparison tables from the Times Online. And for maths student satisfaction comes in second, with a score of 90% (only narrowly topped by Leicester with 91%).

Since the foundation of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich Park in 1675, Greenwich has had an important place in the development of mathematics in Britain. Early Astronomers Royal, including Flamsteed and Halley, made precise measurements of star positions and attempted to solve the crucial problem of determining longitude at sea. The inspirational teachers, Edward and John Riddle, pioneered the teaching of the mathematics of navigation. The leading abstract algebraist, William Burnside, spent his working life at the College. In the 20th century, the Nautical Almanac Office led in the development of automatic computation. Today, researchers at Greenwich are involved in life-saving work on the mathematics of fire and evacuation, and are building mathematical models that will ensure the ageing Cutty Sark is preserved for future generations.


The Painted Hall

Flamsteed and his assistant Weston can be found on the ceiling of the Painted Hall in the left-hand corner immediately as you enter. Other mathematicians in the Painted Hall include Archimedes, Copernicus and Tycho Brahe, while Newton is
represented not by a portrait but by some of his geometrical diagrams.

The Royal Observatory, home of Greenwich Mean Time and the Prime Meridian line, was founded on 22 Jun 1675 and is, by international decree, the official starting point for each new day, year and millennium (at the stroke of midnight GMT as measured from the Prime Meridian.

The Meridain Line is a line which runs from the North to the South Poles. By international convention it runs through the 'primary transit' instrument (main telescope) at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Since the late 19th century, the Prime Meridian at Greenwich has served as the reference line for Greenwich Mean Time. It can now claim to be the centre of world time, and was the official starting point for the new Millennium. The Greenwich Meridian was chosen to be the Prime Meridian of the World in 1884. Forty-one delegates from 25 nations met in Washington DC for the International Meridian Conference.


Inigo Jones classical design

King Charles II who founded The Royal Observatory commanded John Flamsteed to apply "the most exact Care and Diligence to rectifying the Tables of the Motions of the Heavens, and the Places of the fixed Stars, so as to find out the so much desired Longitude at Sea, for perfecting the art of Navigation".

Jonas Moore, Surveyor General of the Ordnance, who instigated the foundation of an observatory at Greenwich, donated the necessary instruments to Flamsteed. In 1681 John Flamsteed, while still serving as Deputy Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College, began to take in pupils at Greenwich.


Winter games outside Royal Observatory

King Charles's interest had been aroused a year earlier when the Sieur de St. Pierre, a French friend of his mistress, claimed to have a method for finding longitude. This was essentially the method of lunar distances, first proposed by Johannes Werner in 1514. A royal commission, including Wren and Hooke, had already been set up to consider using the dip of a magnetic needle to determine longitude and Charles asked them to study St. Pierre's proposal. The commission asked Flamsteed to report on it and he showed the method was theoretically sound, but was impractical as the positions of the moon and the stars were not known with sufficient accuracy.



In 2009 an engineering graduate from The University of Greenwich was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. Charles Kuen Kao, a Chinese-born Briton, was awarded half of the prize for being the first person to develop efficient fibre optic cables. As a result of his work more than 1 billion kilometres of optical cables carry lightning fast broadband internet data to and from households and offices around the world. Two US physicists, Willard Sterling Boyle and George Smith, from Bell Labs in New Jersey, shared the second half of the prize for inventing the first digital imaging technology. Their work made digital cameras possible and has led to huge advances in medical and astronomical imaging technology.