At some point in every conversation about my postgraduate research on seventeenth-century political culture, I am forced to admit that a massive chunk of it looks at criminal executions and the public display of severed body parts. Eyebrows raise. I receive a wonderful mix of reacting stares, usually falling somewhere between bemusement and disgust. And then I have to explain why.

In the canons of both English Literature and the history of Mathematics, a lot of emphasis is traditionally placed on “pale, male, and stale” figures. Empowering silenced voices to address institutional violence suffered by marginalised people has never been more important. Stuart Taylor shares the following story of a mathematician in their institutional and historical context.