Muriel Seltman
{{Short description|British left-wing activist, mathematics educator, historian of mathematics, and author}}
{{Use dmy dates|cs1-dates=ly|date=May 2021}}
{{Use list-defined references|date=May 2021}}
Muriel Seltman ({{nee|Barnett}}; 27 March 1927 – 2 December 2019){{r|cemb}} was a British left-wing activist, mathematics educator, historian of mathematics, and author of books on mathematics, religion, politics, and philosophy.
Life
Seltman was born in Stamford Hill, a Jewish neighborhood of London,{{r|se9}} on 27 March 1927.{{r|cemb}} She studied mathematics and mathematics education at Trinity College Dublin,{{r|tcd}}{{r|tcdrv}} and met her husband there.{{r|coyle}} They joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1952,{{r|bbc}} but by the early 1960s had been expelled from the party for their anti-revisionism (sympathy for Maoism and opposition to the Khrushchev Thaw).{{r|coyle}} They traveled with their son to North Korea,{{r|bbc}} where Seltman worked as a teacher, but, bored with the North Korean cult of personality and their life there,{{r|coyle}} left for China in 1965, just in time for the Cultural Revolution. Disillusioned, they returned to England in 1966,{{r|bbc}} and Seltman later wrote a book What's Left? What's Right? describing her experiences.{{r|coyle}}
She taught mathematics at Avery Hill College beginning in 1968, retiring in 1981 but continuing on a part-time basis for another 20 years, through the college's 1985 incorporation into the University of Greenwich.{{r|se9}} Her works in mathematics and the history of mathematics include a translation of a book on algebra by Thomas Harriot, originally published in 1631, a few years after Harriot's death. Co-editor Robert Goulding provided the translation, while Seltman was responsible for the book's detailed commentary on Harriot's work,{{r|aap}} with both translation and commentary based on a master's thesis she wrote at University College London, A Commentary on the Artis Analyticae Praxis of Thomas Harriot (1972).{{r|ucl}} She also completed a PhD at University College London, with the dissertation Descartes's "Regulae ad directionem ingenii": a case-study in the emergence of early modern algebra (1987).{{r|phd}}
Although of Jewish descent, she became a nontheist Quaker, and despite her early experiences continued to describe herself as a Marxist.{{r|qm}} She died on 2 December 2019.{{r|cemb}}
Books
Seltman's books include:
- Piaget's Logic: A Critique of Genetic Epistemology (with Peter Seltman, George Allen & Unwin, 1985){{r|pl}}
- Thomas Harriot's Artis Analyticae Praxis: An English Translation with Commentary (edited with Robert Goulding, Springer, 2007){{r|aap}}
- What's Left? What's Right?: A Political Journey via North Korea and the Chinese Cultural Revolution (Dorrance Publishing, 2010){{r|se9|coyle}}
- Bread and Roses: Nontheism and the Human Spirit (Matador, 2013){{r|se9}}
- The Changing Faces of Antisemitism (Matador, 2015)
- Rescuing God From Religion (Matador, 2016){{r|rgr}}
- Rescuing Jesus from Christianity (Matador, 2018)
- Marx the Humanist (Troubador, 2019)
References
{{reflist|refs=
{{citation|url=https://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-59a9-voyage-of-disillusion-in-search-for-political-purity|date=June 29, 2014|first=Kenny|last=Coyle|newspaper=Morning Star|title=Voyage of disillusion in search for political purity (review of What's Left? What's Right?)}}
See What's Left? What's Right?, [https://books.google.com/books?id=6BjPBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA23 p. 23]
See Thomas Harriot's Artis Analyticae Praxis, front matter, page v, and the references of {{citation
| last = Stedall | first = Jacqueline A. | author-link = Jackie Stedall
| date = June 2000
| issue = 6
| journal = Archive for History of Exact Sciences
| jstor = 41134093
| pages = 455–497
| title = Rob'd of glories: the posthumous misfortunes of Thomas Harriot and his algebra
| volume = 54| doi = 10.1007/s004070050041 | s2cid = 123490351 }}
{{citation|url=https://thefriend.org/article/quaker-and-marxist|title=Quaker and Marxist?|first=Muriel|last=Seltman|date=17 January 2019|magazine=The Friend}}
Reviews of Thomas Harriot's Artis Analyticae Praxis:
- {{citation
| last = Knobloch | first = Eberhard | author-link = Eberhard Knobloch
| journal = Mathematical Reviews
| mr = 2307972
| title = none
| year = 2008}}
- {{citation
| last = Schlote | first = Karl-Heinz
| journal = zbMATH
| title = none
| zbl = 1151.01006}}
- {{citation
| last = Stedall | first = Jacqueline A. | author-link = Jackie Stedall
| date = September 2007
| work = MAA Reviews
| title = Review
| url = https://www.maa.org/press/maa-reviews/thomas-harriots-artis-analyticae-praxis-an-english-translation-with-commentary}}
- {{citation
| last = Kitchener | first = Richard F.
| date = June 1991
| doi = 10.1093/bjps/42.2.285
| issue = 2
| journal = British Journal for the Philosophy of Science
| jstor = 688061
| pages = 285–290
| title = none
| volume = 42}}
- {{citation
| last = Spiro | first = Avron
| date = January 1986
| doi = 10.1080/0098559860120106
| issue = 1
| journal = The Review of Education
| pages = 25–29
| title = Making sense of Piaget's critics
| volume = 12}}
Review of Rescuing God From Religion:
- {{citation|first=Alec|last=Gilmore|newspaper=Baptist Times|publisher=Baptists Together|title=Book reviews|url=https://www.baptist.org.uk/Articles/493314/Rescuing_God_from.aspx|date=7 April 2017}}
}}
{{Authority control|state=collapsed}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Seltman, Muriel}}
Category:British women historians
Category:British women mathematicians
Category:British mathematics educators
Category:British historians of mathematics
Category:Alumni of Trinity College Dublin
Category:Alumni of University College London