NOTE
Mathematics is one of the many subjects studied in the college’s interdisciplinary great books curriculum. There are no majors at St. John’s. Instead, students explore all these subjects over the course of all four years. Learn more about St. John’s classes.
What is the relation between geometry and arithmetic? How can we model the motion of the heavenly bodies? What roles do diagrams and imagination play in a demonstrative proof? What is the structure of good reasoning? Can there be mathematics of the infinite and the infinitesimal? Are there multiple geometries? Students study original and influential works of mathematics, demonstrating hundreds of theorems to one another in class, and inquiring into the foundations of geometry, mathematical physics, logic, number theory, set theory, algebra, analysis, multi-variable calculus, differential equations, and astronomy.
Archimedes “On the Equilibrium of Planes,” “On Floating Bodies”
Aristotle Poetics, Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachaen Ethics, On Generation and Corruption, Politics, Parts of Animals, Generation of Animals
Amedeo Avogadro "Essay on a Manner of Determining the Relative Masses of the Elementary Molecules of Bodies”
Claude Berthollet “Excerpt from Essai de Statique Chimique”
Joseph Black “Extracts from Lectures on the Elements of Chemistry”
Stanislao Cannizzaro “Letter to Professor S. De Luca”
John Dalton “Extracts from A New System of Chemical Philosophy”
Hans Driesch “The Science and Philosophy of the Organism”
Euclid Elements
Daniel Fahrenheit “The Fahrenheit Scale”
Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac “On the Expansion of Gases by Heat,” “Memoir on the Combination of Gaseous Substances with Each Other”
William Harvey On The Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
Antoine Lavoisier Elements of Chemistry
Lucretius On the Nature of Things
Edme Mariotte Essays
Dmitri Mendeleev “The Periodic Law of the Chemical Elements”
Nicomachus Arithmetic
Blaise Pascal Treatise on the Equilibrium of Liquids
J.L. Proust “Excerpt from Sur Les Oxidations Metalliques”
Ptolemy Almagest
Hans Spemann “The Organizer-Effect in Embryonic Development” (Nobel Lecture 1935), “Embryonic Development and Induction”
J. J. Thomson “Extracts from System of Chemistry”
Rudolf Virchow “Cellular Pathology Lectures”
Apollonius Conics
Aristotle De Anima, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Categories
Francis Bacon Novum Organum
Nicolaus Copernicus On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres
René Descartes Geometry, Discourse on Method
Johannes Kepler Astronomia Nova
Blaise Pascal Generation of Conic Sections
Ptolemy Almagest
François Viète Introduction to the Analytical Art
André-Marie Ampère Essays
Daniel Bernoulli “On the Vibrating String”
Charles-Augustin Coulomb “Excerpts from Coulomb’s Mémoires sur l’électricité et le magnétisme”
Richard Dedekind Essay on the Theory of Numbers
René Descartes Meditations, Rules for the Direction of the Mind
Leonhard Euler “Remarks on the Preceding Papers by Mr. Bernoulli”
Michael Faraday “Experimental Researches in Electricity”
Benjamin Franklin “Excerpt from several letters to Peter Collinson on the nature of electricity”
Galileo Galilei Two New Sciences
William Gilbert “De Magnete”
David Hume Treatise on Human Nature
Christiaan Huygens Treatise on Light, On the Movement of Bodies by Impact
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Monadology, Discourse on Metaphysics, Principles of Nature and Grace, Essays
James Clerk Maxwell “On Faraday’s Lines of Force.” “On Physical Lines of Force,” “A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field”
Isaac Newton Principia Mathematica
Jean-Antoine Nollet “Observations on Several New Electrical Phenomena”
Hans Christian Ørsted “Experiments concerning the efficacy of electric conflict on the magnetic needle”
Brook Taylor “On the motion of the stretched string”
Alessandro Volta “On the Electricity excited by the mere contact of conducting substances of different kinds”
Thomas Young “On the Nature of Light and Colors”
Niels Bohr “On the Spectrum of Hydrogen”
Theodor Boveri Essays
Louisde Broglie “Matter Waves”
Charles Darwin Origin of Species
Albert Einstein “Relativity,” “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” “On the Influence of Gravitation on the Propagation of Light,” “The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity,” “Does the Inertia of a Body Depend upon its Energy Content?”
Michael Faraday “On the Absolute Quantity of Electricity Associated with the Particles or Atoms of Matter”
François Jacob & Jacques Monod Essays
George Beadle & Edward Tatum Essays
G. H. Hardy “Mendelian Proportions in a Mixed Population”
Georg Hegel Phenomenology of Mind
Werner Karl Heisenberg “Critique of the Physical Concepts of the Particle Picture”
Edmund Husserl Crisis of the European Sciences
James Watson & Francis Crick Essays
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck “Zoological Philosophy”
Nikolai Lobachevsky Theory of Parallels
Gregor Mendel “Experiments with Plant Hybridization”
Robert Andrews Millikan “The Electron”
Hermann Minkowski “Space and Time”
Thomas Morgan “Evolution and Genetics,” “The Chromosomes and Mendel's Two Laws,” “The Linkage Groups and the Chromosomes,” “Sex-Linked Inheritance,” “Crossing-Over”
Max Planck “The Quantum Hypothesis”
Ernest Rutherford “The Scattering of α & β Particles by Matter and the Structure of the Atom”
Erwin Schrödinger “Four Lectures of Wave Mechanics—First Lecture”
Joel Sussman Essays
Walter Sutton Essays
J. J. Thomson “Cathode Rays”
Albert Einstein Essays
Richard Feynman QED
G. H. Hardy A Course of Pure Mathematics
Georg Hegel Philosophy of Nature
Bertrand Russell An Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy
Computation
Computing Technology and Human Society
Neuroscience Mathematics and Natural Science
The information presented is for illustration purposes only and may not reflect the current reading list and preceptorial and study group offerings. Works listed are studied at one or both campuses, although not always in their entirety.
During Homecoming weekend on the Santa Fe campus, the St. John's College Class of 2004 and friends unveiled their spectacular gift to the college: a functioning armillary sphere, the only one of its kind in the world.
Two St. John’s College alumni have a special bond as they teach math on opposite coasts.
At St. John’s College in Santa Fe, Zhen Liang (SF14) encountered the questions that continue to define her intellectual life.
Qi Zhan (A18) came to St. John's because she felt like something was missing from her education. Here, she found it.
Santa Fe tutor Topi Heikkerö talks math as a liberal art.
Jordan Finch (SF00) is an award-winning timber framer in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.
