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{{Short description|American mathematician and historian (1906–1976)}}

factoids

Hellertown, Pennsylvania>Hellertown, Pennsylvania, U.S.Dauben, Joseph Warren and Scriba, Christoph J. (2002) Writing the history of mathematics: its historical development, Birkhäuser. Cf. pp.380-381 for the biography of Boyer.19762611|3}}|death_place = New York City|other_names = |known_for = |occupation = Historian of mathematics|nationality = American}}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".WEB, Wallace, David Foster, David Foster Wallace, An excerpt from Everything and More,weblink 2007-08-28,weblink 2012-02-19, 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. 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) "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 SocietyIn 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) "Guggenheim Fund Grants $1,000,000" The New York TimesBoyer wrote the books The History of the Calculus and Its Conceptual Development (1959),WorldCat.org OCLC=916224186 originally published as The Concepts of the Calculus (1939),Library of Congress Online Catalog, BIBLD=8312338 History of Analytic Geometry (1956),Library of Congress Online Catalog, BIBLD=7462342 The Rainbow: From Myth to Mathematics (1959),Library of Congress Online Catalog, BIBLD=3111320 and A History of Mathematics (1968).Library of Congress Online Catalog, BIBLD=3121041 He served as book-review editor of Scripta Mathematica.BOOK, Scripta Mathematica, 1950,weblink 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) "Marjorie Boyer" (paid obituary), The New York Times established the Carl B. Boyer Memorial Prize, to be awarded annually to a Columbia University undergraduate for the best essay on a scientific or mathematical topic.WEB, Columbia College Bulletin:Prizes and Fellowships,weblink 2009-02-20,

References

Notes{{reflist}}Further reading

• Boyer, Carl B. (August 30–September 6, 1950). Lecture: "The Foremost Textbook of Modern Times." International Congress of Mathematicians, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Retrieved on 2009-02-20.
• Boyer, Carl B. (1949). The history of the calculus and its conceptual development Hafner Publishing Company, New York, ed. Dover 1959. Retrieved on 2010-03-30.

External links

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