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The Analytical Society (act. 1812-1813) was a group of Cambridge undergraduate students whose aim was to import mathematical work done in Continental Europe.

Background
Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz independently invented calculus in the 17th century. While Leibnizian calculus flourished in Germany and France, Newtonian calculus remained prominent in Britain well into the 19th century. Leibniz corresponded with and mentored several prominent mathematicians, including Guillaume de l'Hôpital and Johann Bernoulli, both of whom were influential in the further development of calculus. Subsequent to Leibniz's correspondence, l'Hôpital wrote the first textbook in calculus, Analyse des Infiniment Petits pour l'Intelligence des Lignes Courbes in 1696. Later in the 18th century, French mathematicians began systematically appealing to mathematical analysis to solve certain problems and expand Leibnizian calculus. This analytic approach was in contrast to the typical British appeal to geometry. However, the dichotomy was not ubiquitous. The members of the Analytical Society cite several English mathematicians in the Preface to their Memoirs, published in 1813, particularly Brook Taylor. Although Taylor's work was primarily done in the early 18th century, Philip Enros points out that mathematicians in the Society were not the first who attempt a revival of British mathematics.

In 1789, The French Revolution had given British mathematicians another reason to avoid Continental mathematics. They feared that French ideologies fostered unrest and war. The analytic approach to mathematics is unencumbered by the realities of geometrical attributes of space. Thus mathematics in Britain fell further behind in hopes of creating order and discipline through Anglican geometrical education.

Formation
In the 1813 preface to the Society's Memoirs, the members lamented that work in calculus had fallen behind,

". . .as if the soil of this country were unfavourable to its cultivation, it soon drooped and almost faded into neglect, and we have now to re-import the exotic, with nearly a century of foreign improvement, and to render it once more indigenous among us."