The book review (due February 22)
You will need to both email a .pdf to me at fjsteachmath@gmail.com,
as well as to turnitin.com.
Here is the information for our class:
Math 629 History of Mathematics Class ID: 14763288 Class Password: Sottile629
Your first paper is a review of a book that contains both
a nontrivial amount of history and a nontrivial amount of mathematics.
There are many (perhaps too many) possibilities.
This could be, for example
- a biography of a mathematician, such as
S. Nasar, A Beautiful Mind: Biography of John Nash, Jr, or
S. Batterson, Stephen Smale.
- a memoir or autobiography, such as
G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology, or
P. Halmos, I Want to be a Mathematician.
- a history of a branch of mathematics, such as
Carl Boyer, The History of Calculus and its Conceptual Development.
- a history of a particular period of mathematics, such as
Frank J. Swetz, Capitalism and Arithmetic: The new math of the 15th Century, or
J.L. Berggren, Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam.
- a story of a particular mathematical development, such as
David Bressoud, Proofs and Confirmations: the story of the alternating sign matrix conjecture, or
J.W. Dauben, Abraham Robinson; the creation of non-standard analysis, a personal and mathematical odyssey.
- Liping Ma's book ......
This is by no means exhaustive, even of the types of books that are available.
I just went through the list of books in my library [it is in storage in boxes in Texas] and picked out a few (of about 50 on history and
biography) that are representative.
I have read all of these sometime in the past 35 years.
More extensive lists appear on the course pages of my predecessors,
Unlike Allen and Geller, I do not require you to each choose different books.
A list of specialty online bookstores is on Fulling's
Links page.
Some of these books may be available from a local library or through other electronic resources.
Please let me know (short email to sottile@math.tamu.edu or via Piazza) which book
you plan to review.
We can also discuss this.
Get to this soon.
Further:
-
The books listed above on the pages of my predecessors vary in level, including level of scholarship and mathematical maturity required.
On the low end of both is the engaging "Men of Mathematics" by E.T. Bell (who also wrote
science fiction in the 1920's, but was a math professor at Cal Tech— Constance Reid (Sister of the famous mathematician Julia
Robinson) wrote an intriguing biography of E.T. Bell, and has nice biographies of other mathematicians.).
-
Most of you are teachers or parents or both. If you read a book
intended for a popular or juvenile audience, write your review from the
perspective "I do/don't recommend this book for students at level X."
- Several of the biograpies contain references that delve into
the mathematics at a more technical level (for example, the subject's actual research papers).
Maybe you could follow up some of those leads.
- The review is due 22 February 2017, it is to be at least 1000 words long, and will be handed in both to turnitin.com, as well as emailed to my
teaching email: fjsteachmath@gmail.com.
I will mark it both for content and for quality of writing, but more the first than the second.
Special Thanks to Prof. Fulling, whose page this is based upon
Last modified: Sun Apr 2 10:04:22 EDT 2017