Francis Maddison: World authority on Arab-Islamic mathematical and scientific instruments and their makers
FRANCIS MADDISON, who died on July 12 aged 78, was an Arabist and an historian, and became Curator of Oxford's Museum of the History of Science.
A taste for the recondite, a love of languages, a delight in the bizarre or puzzling - these, allied to careful and accurate scholarship were the characteristics that led Maddison from his undergraduate studies in modern languages and history to the direction of the world-class collection of scientific and technical artefacts in Oxford.
Francis Romeril Maddison was was born at Hounslow on July 27 1927, the elder son of Robert Edwin Witton Maddison, an organist, research chemist and historian of science, and of Adélaïde Romeril Verdier. Francis was educated at Hounslow College and at Exeter College, Oxford, where he took a degree in Modern History having switched from Modern Languages.
Maddison was also fascinated by archaeology, and as president of the university's archaeological society in 1948 he learned to cut flint in the palaeolithic manner from RJC Atkinson, under whose supervision he directed excavations at Cricklade and Dorchester.
He was a member of the British School at Rome expedition to Leptis Magna, Tripolitana, in 1949, before becoming assistant archivist, first at the Glamorgan County Record Office, then in Warwickshire. While preparing an exhibition about the Warwickshire county historian Sir William Dugdale, he met CJ Josten, Curator of the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, who was collecting materials for his monumental life of Elias Ashmole, Dugdale's son-in-law.
Shortly afterwards, Josten encouraged Maddison to accept the post of assistant curator in the Museum of the History of Science rather than that of archivist to the University Press. It was the beginning of a 40-year association with the museum.
Crown among the many riches of the museum is the collection of more than 100 astrolabes, the largest of its kind in the world, and some two-thirds of which are Arab-Islamic instruments.
Maddison had already learnt the rudiments of Arabic from his father, but he now extended his command of the language while studying and re-displaying these instruments.
The interdisciplinary nature of this material, requiring skills in geometry, epigraphy and linguistics to be combined with the historian's sense of context and change, was perfectly suited to Maddison's delight in variety and the resolving of puzzles. A stream of scholarly papers in the late 1950s and 1960s resulted from this work, and Maddison's expertise was increasingly in demand among scholarly antiquarian book-sellers, such as Ernst Weill, and the leading London auction-houses.
But Maddison's curiosity would not allow him to remain within the limits of a single discipline, even one as one as varied as his own. He extended his research interests into the history of horology, time-measurement and early techniques of navigation at sea. In later years he studied Georgian and Armenian with his colleague and friend Charles Dowsett, holder of the Callouste Gulbenkian chair in the subject at Oxford....
A taste for the recondite, a love of languages, a delight in the bizarre or puzzling - these, allied to careful and accurate scholarship were the characteristics that led Maddison from his undergraduate studies in modern languages and history to the direction of the world-class collection of scientific and technical artefacts in Oxford.
Francis Romeril Maddison was was born at Hounslow on July 27 1927, the elder son of Robert Edwin Witton Maddison, an organist, research chemist and historian of science, and of Adélaïde Romeril Verdier. Francis was educated at Hounslow College and at Exeter College, Oxford, where he took a degree in Modern History having switched from Modern Languages.
Maddison was also fascinated by archaeology, and as president of the university's archaeological society in 1948 he learned to cut flint in the palaeolithic manner from RJC Atkinson, under whose supervision he directed excavations at Cricklade and Dorchester.
He was a member of the British School at Rome expedition to Leptis Magna, Tripolitana, in 1949, before becoming assistant archivist, first at the Glamorgan County Record Office, then in Warwickshire. While preparing an exhibition about the Warwickshire county historian Sir William Dugdale, he met CJ Josten, Curator of the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, who was collecting materials for his monumental life of Elias Ashmole, Dugdale's son-in-law.
Shortly afterwards, Josten encouraged Maddison to accept the post of assistant curator in the Museum of the History of Science rather than that of archivist to the University Press. It was the beginning of a 40-year association with the museum.
Crown among the many riches of the museum is the collection of more than 100 astrolabes, the largest of its kind in the world, and some two-thirds of which are Arab-Islamic instruments.
Maddison had already learnt the rudiments of Arabic from his father, but he now extended his command of the language while studying and re-displaying these instruments.
The interdisciplinary nature of this material, requiring skills in geometry, epigraphy and linguistics to be combined with the historian's sense of context and change, was perfectly suited to Maddison's delight in variety and the resolving of puzzles. A stream of scholarly papers in the late 1950s and 1960s resulted from this work, and Maddison's expertise was increasingly in demand among scholarly antiquarian book-sellers, such as Ernst Weill, and the leading London auction-houses.
But Maddison's curiosity would not allow him to remain within the limits of a single discipline, even one as one as varied as his own. He extended his research interests into the history of horology, time-measurement and early techniques of navigation at sea. In later years he studied Georgian and Armenian with his colleague and friend Charles Dowsett, holder of the Callouste Gulbenkian chair in the subject at Oxford....