Appropriating role models for the mathematical profession: Biographies in the American Mathematical Monthly around 1900

Henrik Kragh Sørensen

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-39649-1_5

Appropriating role models for the mathematical profession: Biographies in the American Mathematical Monthly around 1900

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

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.

Original language	Danish
Title of host publication	Historiography of Mathematics in the 19th and 20th Centuries
Editors	Volker R. Remmert, Martina R. Schneider, Henrik Kragh Sørensen
Number of pages	30
Publisher	Birkhäuser Verlag
Publication date	2016
Pages	79-108
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39649-1_5
Publication status	Published - 2016

Series	Trends in the History of Science
ISSN	2297-2951

Access to Document

10.1007/978-3-319-39649-1_5

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-39649-1_5

Cite this

Appropriating role models for the mathematical profession: Biographies in the American Mathematical Monthly around 1900. / Sørensen, Henrik Kragh.
Historiography of Mathematics in the 19th and 20th Centuries. ed. / Volker R. Remmert; Martina R. Schneider; Henrik Kragh Sørensen. Birkhäuser Verlag, 2016. p. 79-108 (Trends in the History of Science).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Book chapter › Research › peer-review

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