Bartholomew Price

Bartholomew Price (1818 - 29 December 1898) was an English mathematician and educator.

He was born at Coln St Denis, Gloucestershire, in 1818. He was educated at Pembroke College, Oxford, of which college (after taking a first class in mathematics in 1840 and gaining the university mathematical scholarship in 1842) he became fellow in 1844 and tutor and mathematical lecturer in 1845. He at once took a leading position in the mathematical teaching of the university, and published treatises on the Differential calculus (in 1848) and the Infinitesimal calculus (4 vols., 1852-1860), which for long were the recognized textbooks there. This latter work included the differential and integral calculus, the calculus of variations, the theory of attractions, and analytical mechanics.

In 1853 he was appointed Sedleian professor of natural philosophy, resigning it in June 1898. His chief public activity at Oxford was in connection with the hebdomadal council, and with the Clarendon Press, of which he was for many years secretary. He was also a curator of the Bodleian Library, an honorary fellow of the Queen's College, a governor of Winchester College and a visitor of Greenwich Observatory. In 1891 he was elected Master of Pembroke College, which dignity carried with it a canonry of Gloucester Cathedral. He also sems to have donated an interesting astronomical clock to Gloucester cathedral. He died in December 1898.

See Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (1899).

Nowadays, Professor Price is best remembered as one of the teachers of Lewis Carroll. There is a reference to his nickname of 'the bat' in the Mad Hatter's song "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat", a parody of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.