[BSHM meetings] Topics in the history of financial mathematics: early commerce to chaos in modern stock markets

This account provides an overview of the study day, entitled 'Topics in the History of Financial Mathematics: Early commerce to chaos in modern stock markets,' held by the British Society for the History of Mathematics jointly with Gresham College, at Gresham College, London on 25th April 2008. The series of talks explored the development of mathematics and mathematical techniques in a commercial and financial context.

An integrated study (geochemistry, stable oxygen and carbon isotopes, nannofossils, planktonic foraminifera, inoceramid bivalves, ammonites and crinoids) of the Waxahachie Dam Spillway section, north Texas: a possible boundary stratotype for the base of the Campanian Stage

The spillway of Lake Waxahachie, Ellis County (Texas), exposes a > 17 m section of the Hutchins Member of the Austin Chalk Group, un-conformably overlain by Taylor Clay. The Austin sequence was regarded as a potential Global Stratotype Section for the base of the Campanian Stage at the 1995 Brussels meeting on Cretaceous Stage boundaries, with the last occurrence of the crinoid Marsupites testudinarius (von Schlotheim, 1820) as the potential boundary marker. An integrated study of the geochemistry, stable carbon and oxgen isotopes, nannofossils, planktonic foraminifera, inoceramid bivalves, ammonites and crinoids of this section place the last occurrence of M. testudinarius in a matrix of eighteen ancillary biostratigraphic markers, while the boundary can also be recognised on the basis of a delta C-13 excursion that can, in principle, be detected globally in marine sediments. A new forma of the crinoid Marsupites testudinarius is introduced. The Waxahachie section fulfils sufficient geological criteria as to be an excellent candidate GSSP for the base of the Campanian Stage, if problems of ownership and access to the section can be resolved.