Just some guy with a blog

When somebody wants to dispute something that I say about the history of science or the history of mathematics on social media and can’t actually refute it with facts, they often resort to a comment like the one that is the title of this post. It is of course factually correct; I am just some guy with a blog and I’m even prepared to admit that the only real formal qualifications that I have are a very ancient set of very ropey A-levels. I’m quite happy to admit that I am to a large extent an autodidact but I do have quite a large amount of formal academic training acquired over the years. A lot of what I am now going to relate is already known to regular readers of this blog but I think it is worth repeating for any new readers who have joined since I last exposed the details of my somewhat unorthodox life journey. I read my first book on the history of mathematics at about the age of five, Lancelot Hogben’s Man Must Measure, which I assume had belonged to my brother, who was six…