The teaching of mathematics has a history stretching back some hundreds of years. From its infancy through to its adolescence institutions at which mathematics was taught were thinly and somewhat haphazardly spread over the country and so individuals were extremely influential in developing curricula and methods of teaching. Indeed this has continued to be a feature of English mathematics education. In this authoritative account Geoffrey Howson follows the history and development of mathematics teaching by looking at the careers of some of these individuals in detail.

In the mid- 1970s the curriculum development boom in mathematics was to end almost as rapidly as it had begun.