Volume IX, Number 1

HOM SIGMAA News

Mathematical Association of America History of Mathematics Special Interest Group

Date to Remember:

July 31 – Aug. 3, 2019

MathFest in Cincinnati, Ohio

Scotland meeting 2

Calendar 3

Announcements 4

Convergence of-fers Insights into Historical Texts

5-7

HOM on Display 8-9

Ivor Grattan-Guinness Papers

10

Found Math His-tory

11

Pictures from JMM 2019

12

Student Paper Contest

13

Inside this issue:

Happy 2019!

Wow, another year down, and I didn’t move this past year! (If you have been counting, the Shell-Gellasch family moved twice in 2017. My husband retired after 23 years in the Army, we moved so he can teach at his alma mater Eastern Michigan University, built a house outside Ann Arbor, and ARE NOT MOVING AGAIN!) However, there are lots of “moves” ahead for the MAA and HOM SIGMAA.

Many are concerned about the split between the MAA and AMS over the JMM. At the SIGMAA Officer’s meeting at JMM, Deanne Haunsperger (outgoing MAA President), Hortensia Soto (MAA Associate Secretary), and James Daniel (MAA Treasurer) were there to try to field questions, of which there were many. In short, this split has been in the works for about five years. The MAA and the AMS are in vastly different financial situations and the AMS’s decisions on the management of the JMM mean that the MAA loses about $50 per attendee, or about $300,000 per JMM. So starting in 2021 Math Fest will be the official meeting on the MAA. Much like Brexit, the details are far from ironed out. SIGMAAs can still have events at JMM, but we need to organize and negotiate that directly with the AMS. This could possibly (again, no details yet) mean some costs.

The HOM Exec had been hoping to have a larger presence at Math Fest, and we will continue to build our summer program so that in two years we are prepared to have our main program then. But for the third time, no real details yet so this is still guess work. The moment more details trickle down, I will get them out to you.

On a happier note, the HOM SIGMAA and the Math Circles for Students and Teachers SIGMAA are teaming up to promote math circles with an historical fo-cus. We will be having a session on that at Math Fest and will gather ideas and les-son plans for anyone interested in hosting such a math circle. We will eventually post those resources on our website and possibly on the National Math Circle web-site. If you have questions or want to contribute, please contact me. Any activity you do in your math history class can most likely be adapted for a math circle.

Finally, the HOM SIGMAA is proud to continue to support the work being done at the Archives for American Mathematics at the Briscoe Center at UT-Austin.

Greetings from the HOM SIGMAA Chair

February 2019

Continued on next page ...

What HOM Sessions Would You Like to See at Future MAA

Meetings?

Keeping in mind that paper sessions, panel discussions, and special lectures are approved about a year in advance, please share your ideas for HOM events at the JMM and MathFest with HOM SIGMAA Program Coordinator Toke Knudsen at toke.knudsen@oneonta.edu. Also, please contact him if you are willing to organ-ize or co-organize such an event, or are interested in helping out in any way, big or small, with HOM SIGMAA programs. All suggestions are welcome!

Greetings from the HOM SIGMAA Chair (continued from page 1)

In 2018 we donated $3000 to prepare the Uta Merzbach papers. We hope to send another check this year to complete the approximately $5000 needed for that project. Money is still needed to prepare the Ivor Grat-tan-Guinness papers, and AAM is halfway to its goal of a $2M endowment. Please consider a small per-sonal donation either to AAM in general or to the Grattan-Guinness papers.

It was -1 degrees this morning when I walked my dog, with a “feels like” of -18 degrees. So stay warm, make a cup of hot cocoa, and read some good math history this winter.

Amy Shell-Gellasch

HOM SIGMAA Chair

PAGE 2 HOM SIGMAA NEWS

The Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics (CSHPM ) and the British

Society for the History of Mathematics (BSHM) are having their next joint meeting at St. An-

drews in Scotland (home of Mac Tutor!) July 6-8, 2020. HOM SIGMAA has been invited to be

involved and we have accepted. Most likely HOM SIGMAA will sponsor a session.

Please put Scotland, July 2020 on your calendars!

SAVE THE DATE!!!

2019 Meeting and Conference Calendar ARITHMOS Reading Group TBA, Western Connecticut State University Readings in the History of Mathematics from Original Sources seminars are 24-hour workshops on the clas-sics of mathematics, read in the original or in a Eng-lish translation. A dozen pages of mathematics is typi-cally covered per session, which usually runs from 2 –6 p.m. on the first day, and 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on the second. Organized by Rob Bradley and Chuck Rocca, ARITHMOS meets three to five times per year at Western Connecticut State University. For more in-formation, visit http://www.arithmos.org/.

The Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics (CSHPM) June 2-4, Vancouver

The Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics will hold its annual meeting in conjunc-tion with the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of British Co-lumbia in Vancouver, June 2–4, 2019. The special ses-sion topic is “Mathematical Astronomy,” and the Ken-neth O. May lecture will be given by Alexander Jones. For registration, housing, and travel information, see the announcement at http://www.cshpm.org/. In 2020, CSHPM and the British Society for the History of Mathematics will have a joint meeting at St Andrews, Scotland, on July 6–8. HOM SIGMAA is planning to hold a session at this meeting.

Original Source Reading event at Math-Fest 2019 in Cincinnati

HOM SIGMAA, the Euler Society, the ORESME Reading Group (based in Cincinnati, OH), the Arithmos Reading Group (based in the New York City area), and the TRIUMPHS (TRansforming Instruction in Undergraduate Mathematics via Primary Historical Sources) Project are all sponsoring and/or helping to organize a first-time event at this summer’s MathFest in Cincinnati: an open Primary Source Reading event. We hope to hold a two-hour session on the evening of the second day of the meeting (Thursday, Aug 1). An-yone at the meeting who is interested can participate in a common reading of a portion of Leonhard Euler’s Introduction to Analysis of the Infinite, vol. I (1748). They will spend the bulk of the session at tables of six to eight people, reading and discussing the common

text (from Blanton’s 1988 English translation of the Latin original, published by Springer). Brief remarks on forming and maintaining original source reading groups, and on the Euler text we will read will open the session, and time for general discussion will come at the end. An organizational meeting for the event will be held at Xavier University in Cincinnati on Fri-day evening, May 24. If you are interested in assisting, please contact Danny Otero (otero@xavier.edu) before May 3, 2019.

Convergence Calendar

Visit https://www.maa.org/press/periodicals/convergence/convergence-calendar for a list of events and meetings around the world which relate to the History of Mathematics.

PAGE 3 HOM SIGMAA NEWS

Save these dates for future MAA meetings!

Summer 2019 Cincinnati, OH July 31-Aug3

Winter 2020 Denver, CO Jan. 15-18

Summer 2020 Philadelphia, PA July 29-Aug1

Winter 2021 Washington, DC January 6-9

Summer 2021 Sacramento, CA August 4-7

Summer 2022 Washington, DC August 3-6

Summer 2023 Tampa, FL August 2-5

Congratulations to our newly elected HOM SIGMAA Officers and thanks for your will-ingness to serve!

Amy Shell-Gellasch has been re-elected to a sec-ond 3-year term as President; and Colin McKin-ney has been re-elected to a similar second 3-year term as Electronic Resources Coordinator. Both began their second terms at the end of the 2019 JMM in Baltimore.

Ad Hoc committee on the HOM SIG-MAA Expository Writing Prize

We need one or two more volunteers to help lay plans for two expository writing awards in the history of mathematics. Interested parties should contact Amy Shell-Gellasch at ashellge@emich.edu. We will start planning via email, and have a committee meeting at MathFest in Cincinnati.

Small grants for the history of mathe-matics classroom coming soon

Keep an eye out on the listserv or the website for de-tails of our new grant program to help HOM mem-bers purchase items for use in the teaching of the his-tory of mathematics. For example, a few years back my college helped me purchase a classroom set of Japanese and Chinese abacus. If your institution does not have those funds, we can help.

HoM Community suffers loss

David Zitarelli, longtime member of HOM SIGMAA and the HoM community, passed away suddenly on December 3, 2018. The au-thor and co-author of several books, Dr. Zitarelli had taught for 42 years at Tem-ple University before retir-ing in 2012. The first vol-ume of his magnum opus, A History of Mathematics in the United States and Cana-da (1492-1930), will appear in April 2019, published by MAA Press, an imprint of AMS. Members of HOM SIGMAA are working with the MAA to ensure Volume 2 (1930-2000) is published as well.

In an email to HOM SIGMAA members, Amy Shell-Gellasch wrote, “I cannot begin to describe the contri-butions David has made to our profession and the joy he brought to all of us.” Glasses were raised in his honor at the HOM SIGMAA Business meeting at JMM in Baltimore.

Dr. Zitarelli’s obituary can be found at https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/delcotimes/obituary.aspx?n=david-zitarelli&pid=190916373 .

https://bookstore.ams.org/spec-94/

Announcements

2018 HOM SIGMAA Executive Committee

Chair: Amy Shell-Gellasch, Eastern Michi-gan University

Email: ashellge@emich.edu

Secretary/Treasurer: Cynthia Huffman, Pittsburg State University

Email: cjhuffman@pittstate.edu

Program Coordinator: Toke Knudsen, SUNY Oneonta

Email: toke.knudsen@oneonta.edu

Electronic Resources Coordinator: Colin McKinney, Wabash College

Email: mckinnec@wabash.edu

Prize Coordinator: Amy Shell-Gellasch, Eastern Michigan University

Email: ashellge@emich.edu

Past Chair: Daniel Otero, Xavier University

Email: otero@xavier.edu

PAGE 4 HOM SIGMAA NEWS

MAA Convergence

Offers Insights into Historical Texts

Janet Beery, Janet Barnett, and Amy Ackerberg-Hastings

Editors, MAA Convergence

MAA Convergence is both an online journal on the history of mathematics and its use in teaching, and an ever-expanding collection of online resources to help its readers teach mathematics using its histo-ry. Under the leadership of three well-known mathematics historians and educators, founding editors Vic-tor Katz and Frank Swetz and their decade-long successor Janet Beery, Convergence has offered its read-ers high-quality scholarship and classroom resources since 2004.

We highlight here some of our newest articles and features.

One of Convergence’s ongoing themes is the history of mathematics of non-Western cultures. In “A Classic from China: The Nine Chapters,” Randy K. Schwartz examines this early and influential Chinese work, il-lustrating each of its chapters with problems that are accessible to most high school and college students. The authors of “On Squares, Rectangles, and Square Roots,” María Burgos and Pablo Beltrán-Pellicer, de-scribe how they used a particular algorithm from this same Chinese classic with even younger students in a classroom activity that combines the use of manipulatives with the ancient Chinese Kai fang method for extraction of square roots.

Above: The Kai Fang in the classroom: a group of 6th grade students computes square roots.

PAGE 5 HOM SIGMAA NEWS

“An Arabic Finger-reckoning Rule Appropriat-

ed for Proofs in Algebra” by Jeffrey A. Oaks

examines the lesser-known Arabic text Listing

the Veil (1301), and illustrates how its author

ibn al-Bannā employed a practical mental

multiplication technique as the foundation for

novel proofs in algebra.

Left: Folio 51b from the Library of Congress

manuscript of ibn al-Bannā’s Lifting the Veil.

The article “John Napier's Binary

Chessboard Calculator” by Sidney J.

Kolpas and Erwin Tomash takes a

look at one of three calculation inven-

tions described in Napier’s slender

volume Rabdologiae (1617): a method

for using binary arithmetic on a

chessboard as a 5-function calculator

that can be brought into the class-

room using bingo chips and card-

board checkerboards.

Right: The “Promptuary,” a two-

dimensional configuration of rods ca-

pable of higher-speed multiplication

introduced in Napier’s Rabdologiae.

PAGE 6 HOM SIGMAA NEWS

Convergence also continues to feature several ongoing series and collections, including:

• “Math Origins,” in which author Erik Tou traces the historical development of concepts

seen in today’s undergraduate curriculum. The most recent article in the series examines

the origins of Eigenvectors and Eigenvalues.

• “A Series of Mini-projects from TRansforming Instruction in Undergraduate Mathematics

via Primary Historical Sources” which currently offers eight mini-Primary Source Projects

(PSPs) from the TRIUMPHS team for use in a variety of courses. The most recent PSPs to

join the series are:

“How to Calculate π: Machin's Inverse Tangents” (by Dominic Klyve)

“Henri Lebesgue and the Development of the Integral Concept” (by Janet Heine Bar-

nett)

“Seeing and Understanding Data” (by Charlotte Bolch and Beverly Woods)

Above: 17th century graph of the distance from Toledo, Spain, to Rome, Italy, by Mi-

chael Florent van Langren, from the TRIUMPHS mini-Primary Source Project “Seeing

and Understanding Data”.

• “Index to Mathematical Treasures,” which includes hundreds of images for use in your

classroom from dozens of libraries and archives. Our chief “treasure hunter” is Convergence

founding editor Frank Swetz.

See all of these articles and more at MAA Convergence:

http://www.maa.org/press/periodicals/convergence

PAGE 7 HOM SIGMAA NEWS

Visit the HOM SIGMAA website today!!!

The HOM SIGMAA website (http://sigmaa.maa.org/hom/) includes HOM SIGMAA news, announce-ments of upcoming conferences, links to other history of mathematics pages, and other resources. Suggested additions to the website (for example, conference information, links, or photos) are always welcome at mckinnec@wabash.edu.

HOM on Display

A feature of the HOM SIGMAA Newsletter is a review of a museum or library with an exhibit or collection related to the History of Mathematics. If you would like to submit an article for HOM on Display, please send it to Cynthia Huffman at cjhuffman@pittstate.edu.

History of Science Collection at the Linda Hall Library, Kansas City, Missouri https://www.lindahall.org/

by Cynthia Huffman

Imagine being able to hold a 1482 first edition Euclid’s Elements of Geometry in your hand—one of the first mathematics books to be printed after Gutenberg introduced movable type printing to Europe. (A) Or, to ex-plore the “pop-up” figures in the first printed English translation of the Elements. (B) Or, to lay out multiple versions of a work such as the Elements for comparison. (C) Or, to touch where Galileo himself made a cor-rection in a book? (D) Or, from the comfort of your own home or office, virtually look through the pages of Disquisitiones

Arithmeticae by Gauss? (E) Or, maybe you want to download images of Cardano’s Ars Magna (F) to use in your algebra course. These experiences and more can be yours, if you visit the Linda Hall Library either virtually or in person.

(A) (B)

(C) (D)

PAGE 8 HOM SIGMAA NEWS

(E) (F)

The Linda Hall Library (LHL) is an independent research library specializing in engineering, science, and technology, located in Kansas City, MO. Opened in 1946, the library collections number over one million volumes, including a History of Science Collection, containing many rare books from the history of mathe-matics. The LHL Digital Collections provide access to nearly a quarter of a million images from the History of Science collection, including over 75 complete mathematical works. In addition to access to extensive open stacks and a spacious reading room, visitors to LHL can also peruse the current exhibitions in two galleries, as well as visit the William N. Deramus III Cosmology Theater. The exhibitions focus on a theme and typically involve rare books. Some of the past exhibitions have online versions, including two on astronomy and one on Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt, which has information on mathematicians Gaspard Monge and Joseph Fourier. Patrons can also request to look at books and other material from the closed stacks. Complete runs of many journals, serial publications, monographs, conference proceedings, and other reference materials can be found in LHL, including important journals such as Acta Academiae Scientiarum Imperialis Petropoli-

tanae (the transactions of the imperial academy of sciences in St. Petersburg, in which Euler published many articles), Acta Mathematica (founded by Mittag-Leffler in Stockholm), and Journal de Mathématiques Pures

et Appliquées (founded by Joseph Liouville). The library also hosts lectures and other events on a regular ba-sis. Up-to-date information can be found by visiting the LHL webpage or by liking the LHL Facebook page.

The LHL History of Science rare book collection contains a wealth of information for those wanting to take a firsthand look at resources in the history of mathematics. There is a Reading Room where visitors can sign up as a “reader”. In addition to the vault, which contains over 10,000 volumes, there is a caged area with over 10,000 “medium rare” books and periodicals. Class tours can be scheduled so that students can have the op-portunity to see original sources firsthand. It is also possible to take a virtual tour of a portion of the history of mathematics collection at LHL through the Digital Collections. The use of LHL images is encouraged, espe-cially for educational use. Information about image rights and reproduction, as well as information about re-questing an image, can be found here. Fees may apply for requests to publish images.

Research fellowships are available for those interested in spending an extended period of time with the collec-tions at the Linda Hall Library. Fellowships supporting projects using the LHL collections, including research in the history of mathematics, are available for time periods of one week up to four months. More information on LHL Fellowships can be found at http://www.lindahall.org/fellowships/.

(Adapted from Cynthia J. Huffman (Pittsburg State University), “Mathematical Treasures at the Linda Hall Library,” Convergence(January 2017), DOI:10.4169/convergence20170101)

PAGE 9 HOM SIGMAA NEWS

Ivor Grattan-Guinness Papers at the Archives of American Mathematics

Carol Mead, Head of Archives and Manuscripts Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin

As you may know, the Archives of American Mathematics (AAM) at the Bris-coe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin received the papers of Ivor Grattan-Guinness (1941-2014) in 2015, according to his wish-es. We at the AAM thank his widow, Enid Grattan-Guinness, for enabling this important contribution to the archives. We are also grateful to the three people who sorted, packed, and shipped the archive to Texas from Bengeo, Hertford, England: Albert Lewis, Karen Parshall, and Grattan-Guinness’s Ph.D. student, Adrian Rice.

The archive documents several of Grattan-Guinness’s major interests: the histo-ry of mathematics and logic, music, and psychical research. Here we focus on his mathematical interests. Starting with his university education, there are a few files that show his early work, including his handwritten Oxford lecture notes and answers to exams, and his bound dissertation, “The Historical Development of Mathematical Analysis from Euler to Riemann,” which he submitted in June 1969.

The greater portion of the collection is given to his research and projects. Handwritten notes, correspond-ence, and photographs are especially prevalent. For instance, one binder entitled “Roots Archives” con-tains extensive notes on numerous mathematicians, such as E. H. Moore, George Boole, and C. S. Peirce, while others are devoted to scholars, such as Georg Cantor and Bertrand Russell. Grattan-Guinness also kept index cards of bibliographic notes, five compact, numbered notebooks, each titled “Offprints Book,” in which he lists his papers, how many offprints he received, and the people to whom he sent them. Cor-respondence documents his collaboration with colleagues, engagements to give lectures, and his efforts to organize, compile, and edit the Companion Encyclopedia of the History and Philosophy of the Mathemat-ical Sciences. Other binders serve as scrapbooks of photographs he collected of Cantor, his family, and related images, as well as his attendance at the Oberwolfach seminars.

Grattan-Guinness’s papers show where and how he conducted his research in his meticulous notes, which record the domestic and international archives he visited to gather his material. For instance, in one bind-er dedicated to French repositories he devotes each section to one archive, such as the Académie des Sci-ences, where he researched André-Marie Ampère, and to the Bibliothèque Nationale to study Joseph Fou-rier. Another binder of research focuses on Bertrand Russell, containing notes he “compiled mainly in the Russell archives” in 1972. Perhaps one may say the collection is a rich resource of resources.

Here at the AAM we are making plans to process, catalog, and make the Grattan-Guinness papers availa-ble in 2019. The archive has received several generous financial contributions, including from the HOM SIGMAA, for the project, and we now have enough to begin the work once an intern is in place. In the meantime, we have rehoused the collection into archival boxes and created a simple inventory, which I am happy to share. If you are interested in the listing, in supporting the project, or in contributing your own correspondence with Grattan-Guinness, please contact me (carolmead@austin.utexas.edu). I look forward to hearing from you!

PAGE 10 HOM SIGMAA NEWS

Found Math History

Pascal’s calculating machine in the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris. Submitted by Dr. Christopher Goff, University of the Pacific.

PAGE 11 HOM SIGMAA NEWS

PAGE 12 HOM SIGMAA NEWS

Pictures from JMM 2019

HOM SIGMAA Reception, Business Meeting, and Guest Lecture by Dr. Karen H. Parshall, Crossing the Pond: European mathematicians in 1920s America

The History of Mathematics Special Interest Group

of the Mathematical Association of America

is pleased to announce its sixteenth annual

Student Paper Contest

in the History of Mathematics

This contest is open to all undergraduate studentsπ

Papers will be judged by a panel of specialists for content, originality, and presentation.

Typically first and second place winners are chosen.

Submission Guidelines

Topics can be drawn from any field of mathematics.

Papers can address a single person or topic, or be an historical survey of a topic or school of thought.

Submissions should be approximately 5000 words (approximately 12 double-spaced 12 pt. pages) in

length with font that is easy to read.

Submissions should be in a single PDF file, including a title page with title of paper, the author, school,

and complete contact information.

Papers should include a full citation list.

Papers should not draw too heavily from web sources.

Students submitting a paper need not be currently taking a history of mathematics course.

All papers should be single-authored.

Eligible papers are those written in the past year and while the author was an undergraduate.

Submission Deadline: Saturday, March 23, 2019

Results will be announced via email

and on the HOM SIGMAA website in May.

Submissions and questions can be directed to

Dr. Amy Shell-Gellasch ashellge@emich.edu

π Students who have graduated less than a year ago but wrote their paper while still an undergraduate my also participate. ℵ Web sources that give access to print material, such as JSTOR, are completely acceptable.