Blog posts written for the BSHM appear below.
Earlier this year, I submitted papers related to different parts of my dissertation work to three different conferences: the History of Science Society, the American Historical Association, and the Joint Meeting of the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America. These meetings were originally scheduled to take place in New Orleans, Seattle, and Washington, DC, respectively.
I started using lockdown to tackle the 6 cubic metres of my mother’s papers – a task put off for the last 5 years. But I was stopped in my tracks at box 1 when I found a postcard of this picture, “African teaching mathematics to the Greeks”. It shows a Black African teaching geometry to the ancient Greeks and is one of a series of murals by Earl Sweeting.
Now that the summer session has mostly wrapped up at Cornell, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on my experiences teaching the history of science and mathematics. I recently finished teaching a 3-week course called “Science, Technology, and Politics,” a version of which I also taught last summer. The course this year was different in many ways, including its suddenly online format, yet much was also the same. Many students struggled to work through the same kinds of questions and analyses that challenged last year’s students as well.
We are grateful to David Orenstein for sharing with us a letter from Bertrand Russell's time in prison, which links thematically to our Mathematics in Times of Crisis conference. The notes below the link come from David himself.
Next week some more children in England will go back to school, but most of the children will still be learning from home. We have put a short list together for the parents and children alike to do some mathematics during this period, and remind you that the 1st of July is the deadline to submit an essay or presentation in the history of mathematics for our Schools Prize! https://www.bshm.ac.uk/plus
Sometimes the push to finish a big writing project can end up feeling like a “shelter in place” order—a foggy dance between writing and sleeping. For the past two months, while sheltering in place because of COVID-19, I’ve been working towards a deadline to finish a full draft of my dissertation. There were no offices, archives, or libraries, and I relied heavily on HathiTrust and others who helped put resources online. After endless hours of writing and sleeping, interspersed with distance runs and homemade meals, I finally submitted a draft to my committee this week.
The current Coronavirus crisis is on everyone’s minds. For our first Resources Blog we therefore start with the Geometry of viruses, and following this, the history of geometry. But before we get to the links and resources, advice on how to use this Resource Blog posts:
Hello BSHM community!
My name is Ellen Abrams, and I am a current PhD candidate in the Department of Science and Technology Studies (STS) at Cornell University.
The winner of the Taylor & Francis Early Career Research Prize will soon be writing blogs! These will be published periodically, and a feed of them will appear on this page.