Through the millennia, the study of pure mathematics has been associated with high culture and the liberal education of elite. Plato’s Academy bore a sign over the portal denying entry to any who had not studied geometry. The Roman Boethius made sure of the place given to mathematics in a liberal education. He adjoined the mathematical quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy to the trivium at the core of liberal curriculum. Beyond the curriculum of his day (c.480-524), Boethius influenced British education for the following millennium, through his textbooks (Howson,1982).