Person: Hoe, Jock
Jock Hoe, a New Zealander with Cantonese parents, made a substantial contribution with his work on The Jade Mirror of the Four Unknowns translating and giving an important commentary on this Chinese mathematical work of 1303.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- The King Country Chronicle of Saturday 14 December 1929 contains an advertisement for the Hoe Bros.
- We are unsure when Jock's parents arrived in Te Kuiti but the shop was operating by 1922.
- Their parents are Mr and Mrs J Hoe, Swiss Avenue.
- Jack Hoe was 147th in the list of 209 bursary awards.
- Jack William Hoe attended Wanganui Collegiate School from 1936 to 1941, then went on to study medicine being awarded an M.B., Ch.B. He was placed on the Medical Register of the Dominion of New Zealand in 1948.
- Verbena R Hoe also studied medicine.
- It was in 1942 that Jock entered Wanganui Collegiate School and he studied there until 1946.
- In January 1947 Jock Hoe was awarded a National Scholarship, being only one of 20 students to receive such an award, which paid both his university fees and provided a living allowance.
- Jock Hoe entered the University of Otago in 1947 to study mathematics.
- Campbell had become the first President of the New Zealand Statistical Association when it was founded in 1948 and he encouraged Jock Hoe to concentrate on statistics for his Master's Degree.
- While he was at Wellington, Hoe obtained an Associateship diploma from Trinity College London for piano performance.
- After the award of his Master's Degree, Hoe decided to obtain a teaching qualification.
- After a short while Hoe decided that he would like to study mathematics in England at the University of Cambridge so he sent in an application.
- Rather strangely the reply did not come back to Hoe but rather to Frank Gilligan.
- Hoe matriculated at Corpus Christi College Cambridge in 1953 and read the mathematical tripos, specialising in mathematical statistics.
- While at the University of Malaya, Hoe collaborated in writing the 465-page book Traffic flows through Port Swettenham projected to 1975 which was published in 1964.
- By the time the book was published Hoe had left the University of Malaya and returned to New Zealand where he was appointed as a lecturer in mathematics at the Victoria University of Wellington.
- John Hoe, who teaches in the Mathematics Department of the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, has written a profound study of the 'Ssu-yuan yü-chien'.
- We mentioned above the semi-symbolic language Hoe invented and used in Appendix 2 of his thesis.
- Jock hence demonstrated that Chinese script inherently provided a symbolic handling for algebraic quantities and actions, and that this ability of the Chinese language helps to explain why a separate symbolic algebra did not develop in China: it was not needed.
- Jacques Gernet, Hoe's advisor, strongly recommended that the thesis should be published but this is where the difficulties arose.
- They could not afford to publish the appendices, however, and when Hoe tried to find another publisher for the appendices, they all said that they made no sense without the commentary of the first part.
- Although Hoe continued to teach in the Mathematics Department of the Victoria University of Wellington, his interests turned more towards Chinese language and culture.
- was very helpful to Jock, getting him an unasked-for promotion to Reader (which Jock found out about on his return from Paris), and providing him with a sanctuary in the mathematics department while knowing that Jock's main interests by now were in languages and cultures; teaching English speakers about Chinese thought and culture and teaching Chinese speakers about English and Western culture.
- In the late 1970s Jock reduced his mathematics lecturing load to two-thirds, freeing up time to teach Mandarin in the Chinese Department at Victoria University.
- As an example of Hoe's increased interest in Chinese culture, we note that he published, jointly with James Bertram, the paper The poetry of Mao Tse Tung in the Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature in 1977.
- Jock Hoe, our much beloved and respected Chinese statistician scholar.
- It was, in fact, in 1982 that Hoe resigned his position at the Victoria University of Wellington and moved to Shanghai.
- The fear of intervention from a few Chinese-New Zealanders who had citizenship such as Jim Wong, Nancy Goddard (née Kwok) and later Jock Hoe rose to prominence but for many their involvement was either veiled in secrecy or through a companion front organisation.
- Graeme Clarke said that in 1980 Jock Hoe had made pro-cultural revolution comments, Hoe had long drifted away from the Society by this stage and had lived outside of New Zealand for much of the intervening period.
- Jock Hoe, who taught history in Shanghai, had been involved with the Society for many years ...
- Hoe taught history and English at the English Language Institute in Shanghai for a few years, then returned to New Zealand to take up an appointment teaching Chinese at Christchurch Polytechnic and at Massey University.
- After he retired from teaching, Hoe welcomed groups of students to his home to discuss the history of Chinese science.
Born 6 July 1929, Te Kuiti, New Zealand. Died 29 July 2016, Christchurch, New Zealand.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Origin New Zealand
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
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- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
