TY - CHAP
T1 - Appropriating role models for the mathematical profession: Biographies in the American Mathematical Monthly around 1900
AU - Sørensen, Henrik Kragh
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - During the first decade of its existence, the American Mathematical Monthly regularly published short biographies of mathematicians. When read as appropriations of past lives, these biographies can be analysed to provide new insights into the images of mathematics, and of American mathematics in particular, held by groups of authors and welcomed by the readership of the Monthly. Thus, the approach in this paper is a “meta-biographical” one in which biographies are analysed not for their content about past mathematicians but for their appropriation and framing in the context where they were produced. This approach brings forward new insights into the professionalization of mathematics in the United States, the promotion of different disciplines, and the efforts of individuals to cast themselves as following in the footsteps of some of the greatest heroes of mathematics.
AB - During the first decade of its existence, the American Mathematical Monthly regularly published short biographies of mathematicians. When read as appropriations of past lives, these biographies can be analysed to provide new insights into the images of mathematics, and of American mathematics in particular, held by groups of authors and welcomed by the readership of the Monthly. Thus, the approach in this paper is a “meta-biographical” one in which biographies are analysed not for their content about past mathematicians but for their appropriation and framing in the context where they were produced. This approach brings forward new insights into the professionalization of mathematics in the United States, the promotion of different disciplines, and the efforts of individuals to cast themselves as following in the footsteps of some of the greatest heroes of mathematics.
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-319-39649-1_5
DO - 10.1007/978-3-319-39649-1_5
M3 - Bidrag til bog/antologi
T3 - Trends in the History of Science
SP - 79
EP - 108
BT - Historiography of Mathematics in the 19th and 20th Centuries
A2 - Remmert, Volker R.
A2 - Schneider, Martina R.
A2 - Sørensen, Henrik Kragh
PB - Birkhäuser Verlag
ER -