Carl Benjamin Boyer
{{Short description|American mathematician and historian (1906–1976)}}
{{Infobox person
|name = Carl Benjamin Boyer
|image = File:Carl Benjamin Boyer.png
|caption =
|birth_date = {{Birth date|1906|11|3}}
|birth_place = Hellertown, Pennsylvania, U.S.Dauben, Joseph Warren and Scriba, Christoph J. (2002) [https://books.google.com/books?id=oXjMYIonXTYC Writing the history of mathematics: its historical development], Birkhäuser. Cf. [https://books.google.com/books?id=oXjMYIonXTYC&q=boyer pp.380-381] for the biography of Boyer.
|death_date = {{death date and age|1976|4|26|1906|11|3}}
|death_place = New York City, U.S.
|other_names =
|known_for =
|occupation = Historian of mathematics
}}
Carl Benjamin Boyer (November 3, 1906 – April 26, 1976) was an American historian of sciences, and especially mathematics. Novelist David Foster Wallace called him the "Gibbon of math history".{{cite web| author=Wallace, David Foster|author-link=David Foster Wallace|title=An excerpt from Everything and More|url=http://www.conjunctions.com/webcon/wallace.htm|access-date=2007-08-28| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20120219093659/https://www.conjunctions.com/webcon/wallace.htm| archive-date= 2012-02-19| url-status= dead}} It has been written that he was one of few historians of mathematics of his time to "keep open links with contemporary history of science."Gray, Jeremy (2016) "Histories of Modern Mathematics in English in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s" in Remmert, Volker R.; Schneider, Martina; and Kragh Sørensen, Henrik (eds.) Historiography of Mathematics in the 19th and 20th Centuries Birkhäuser. [https://books.google.com/books?id=iKCwDQAAQBAJ&q=open+links&pg=PA161 p.161]. {{ISBN|9783319396491}}
Life and career
Boyer was valedictorian of his high school class. He received a B.A. from Columbia College in 1928 and an M.A. in 1929. He received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Columbia University in 1939. He was a full professor of Mathematics at the City University of New York's Brooklyn College from 1952 until his death, although he had begun tutoring and teaching at Brooklyn College in 1928.
Along with Carolyn Eisele of CUNY's Hunter College; C. Doris Hellman of the Pratt Institute, and later CUNY's Queens College; and Lynn Thorndike of Columbia University, Boyer was instrumental in the 1953 founding of the Metropolitan New York Section of the History of Science Society.Gleason, Mary Louise (1999) [https://www.jstor.org/stable/238014 "The Metropolitan New York Section of the History of Science Society"], Isis, Vol. 90, Supplement: Catching up with the Vision: Essays on the Occasion of the 75th Anniversary of the Founding of the History of Science Society, pp. S200-S218. University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society
In 1954, Boyer was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship to further his work in the history of science. In particular, the grant made reference to "the history of the theory of the rainbow".Staff (May 3, 1954) [https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1954/05/03/92826911.pdf "Guggenheim Fund Grants $1,000,000"] The New York Times
Boyer wrote the books The History of the Calculus and Its Conceptual Development (1959),[https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/916224186 WorldCat.org OCLC=916224186] originally published as The Concepts of the Calculus (1939),[https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/holdingsInfo?searchId=4984&recCount=25&recPointer=1&bibId=8312338 Library of Congress Online Catalog, BIBLD=8312338] History of Analytic Geometry (1956),[https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/holdingsInfo?searchId=4886&recCount=25&recPointer=1&bibId=7462342 Library of Congress Online Catalog, BIBLD=7462342] The Rainbow: From Myth to Mathematics (1959),[https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/holdingsInfo?searchId=4984&recCount=25&recPointer=6&bibId=3111320 Library of Congress Online Catalog, BIBLD=3111320] and A History of Mathematics (1968).[https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/holdingsInfo?searchId=4984&recCount=25&recPointer=4&bibId=3121041 Library of Congress Online Catalog, BIBLD=3121041] He served as book-review editor of Scripta Mathematica.{{cite book|title=Scripta Mathematica|year = 1950|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zeQSAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Carl+B.+Boyer%22|access-date=2007-10-21}}
Boyer died of a heart attack in New York City in 1976.
In 1978, Boyer's widow, the former Marjorie Duncan Nice, a professor of history,Unknown (March 21, 2010) [http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?n=marjorie-boyer&pid=140931766 "Marjorie Boyer" (paid obituary)], The New York Times established the Carl B. Boyer Memorial Prize, to be awarded annually to a Columbia University non US citizen undergraduate for the best essay on a scientific or mathematical topic.{{cite web|title=Columbia College Bulletin:Prizes and Fellowships|url=http://www.college.columbia.edu/bulletin/prizes.php|access-date=2009-02-20}}
References
Notes
{{reflist}}
Further reading
- Boyer, Carl B. (August 30–September 6, 1950). Lecture: [https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Extras/Boyer_Foremost_Text/ "The Foremost Textbook of Modern Times."] International Congress of Mathematicians, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Retrieved on 2009-02-20.
- Boyer, Carl B. (1949). [https://books.google.com/books?id=w3xKLt_da2UC The history of the calculus and its conceptual development] Hafner Publishing Company, New York, ed. Dover 1959. Retrieved on 2010-03-30.
External links
{{Wikiquote}}
- {{Find a Grave}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Boyer, Carl Benjamin}}
Category:20th-century American mathematicians
Category:American historians of mathematics
Category:20th-century American historians
Category:20th-century American male writers
Category:Columbia College (New York) alumni
Category:Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
Category:Brooklyn College faculty
Category:American male non-fiction writers
Category:Educators from Pennsylvania