| Richard Leamington has an impact on mathematics at Cambridge University in the 17th Century despite his multiple sclerosis. Although Leamington himself is a fictional character, many of the other characters in this story are based on historical figures. Nevertheless, the story is entirely fantastical in that it is based on the premise (introduced in an earlier book in the series) that town of Grantville, West Virginia from the year 2000 has been transplanted to England in the year 1632.
Although there is a lot of discussion about teaching and translating math, I was disappointed that there was nothing said about discovering any math through research. (Perhaps that is because it focuses on the information brought back in time from Grantville to England, but I would have been interested in seeing something about it.) In addition, there is also a small error where a character says that Foucault's Pendulum demonstrates the truth of the Copernican model of the solar system. It seems to me that the pendulum does demonstrate that the Earth is rotating on its axis, but says nothing about its motion around the sun.
Aside from those minor complaints, this is a fine short story about academia with a bit of a time-travel twist to it.
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