Lillie’s Academy of Mathematics began as a school in C City and became famous in part because John Lillie insisted on admitting women students when convention and public opinion were against it. The controversy made the academy a spectacle, but it did not close: the family’s decision to enroll its own daughters helped protect it, while the uproar itself drew attention to the institution that would become the predecessor of N University.

Founding and Family Support

Before leaving to study abroad, Grandmother Rong had written that, on his return, John Lillie should receive the silver kept behind the sliding panel in her room as a reward for his filial devotion. He later put that money to use by opening a school in the provincial capital, C City, and naming it Lillie’s Academy of Mathematics. The school’s founding thus rested on a family gift with a stated personal purpose; the silver intended to reward filial piety became the material means for establishing an educational institution.

The academy’s later prominence gave this beginning a larger consequence. It was the predecessor of the famous N University, though it first began to attract renown while it was still known by its original name. Its early reputation was not described as a gradual result of institutional growth alone. The narrative instead identifies the school’s willingness to admit women, and the reactions that followed, as a defining source of its public recognition.

The Decision to Admit Women

John Lillie became the first person to make the academy famous by insisting, despite opposition, that women should be allowed to study there. In the feudal attitudes of the period, the admission of women was so contentious that the school might have been expected to face closure by the authorities. The decision therefore placed the academy in conflict with the assumptions surrounding women’s education, making its admissions policy a public challenge rather than an incidental feature of its work.

The early women students were, according to the Rong family’s official genealogy, all members of the family’s principal branch. That detail mattered to the academy’s survival. Keeping the first admissions within the family gave opponents less leverage to turn gossip into official action: the dispute could be framed as a family’s own decision about its daughters. The account presents this arrangement as the reason gossip never succeeded in closing the academy, not as evidence that the controversy disappeared or that its wider social implications had been settled.

Curiosity, Scandal, and Reputation

For the academy’s first few years, people visiting the provincial capital made time to look at the women students. They treated the school as a spectacle rather than simply as a place of learning. The attention exposed the gulf between the academy’s educational purpose and the assumptions of its curious visitors: the presence of women in a mathematics school was regarded as unusual enough to attract an audience.

That scrutiny carried a risk. In the social climate described by the narrative, gossip might have brought pressure to bear on the institution, and the academy’s survival depended in part on the fact that its early students belonged to the Rong family. Yet the same public commotion also had an unintended effect. The uproar surrounding the school helped make it more famous, so that opposition and curiosity became part of the publicity that established its name. Its early renown was consequently double-edged: the school drew attention because it transgressed expectations, and that attention helped secure its place in public awareness.

Early Recognition and Legacy

A second figure from the Rong family further connected the academy with mathematical ability and public notice. She was the daughter of John Lillie’s older brother, who was already over sixty when he took a concubine. The girl was unusually intelligent, especially in mathematics and calculation. She entered the academy at eleven, and at twelve competed against an expert abacist. She could multiply two four-figure numbers with striking speed, while problems that left others struggling seemed to unravel readily for her.

Her performance did not meet with uncomplicated admiration. Some of the people who challenged her wondered aloud whether she had learned the questions beforehand, revealing how readily the demonstration of a girl’s mathematical skill could be met with suspicion. Her story belongs to the academy’s early reputation as well as to the family history: the institution that had made women’s admission a public controversy also provided a setting in which a gifted girl could study and display her abilities. The academy’s legacy therefore begins with both an institutional change and the reactions it provoked, before its development into the predecessor of N University.