ITS FIRST FIFTY YEARS Carl Β

THE MATHEMATICAL ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA: ITS FIRST FIFTY YEARS Carl Β. Boyer Brooklyn College, CUNY Richard W. Feldmann Lycoming College Harry M. Gehman SUN Yat Buffalo Phillip S. Jones University of Michigan Kenneth O. May University of Toronto Harriet F. Montague SUNYat Buffalo Gregory H. Moore University of Toronto Robert A. Rosenbaum Wesleyan University Emory P. Starke Rutgers University Dirk J. Struik Massachusetts Institute of Technology THE MATHEMATICAL ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA: ITS FIRST FIFTY YEARS Kenneth O. May, editor University of Toronto, Canada Published and distributed by The Mathematical Association of America Copyright 1972 by THE MATHEMATICAL ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA (INCORPORATED) PREFACE The fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Mathematical Association of America was celebrated at the 1965 summer meeting at Cornell University [MONTHLY 72, 1053-1059]. The invited addresses on that occasion dealing with the past, present, and future of the Association and of mathematics, were published in the fiftieth anniversary issue [MONTHLY 74, Num. !, Part II] under the editorship of Carl B. Allendoerfer. The historical addresses by A. A. Bennett, R. A. Rosenbaum, W. L. Duren, Jr., and P. S. Jones whetted appetites for a more complete story of the Association. Early in 1966, on a recommendation of the Committee on Publications, President R. L. Wilder appointed a Committee on the Preparation of a Fifty-Year History of the Association consisting of Carl B. Boyer, Kenneth O. May (Chairman), and Dirk J. Struik. An appropriation of one thousand dollars was set aside to meet incidental expenses. The Committee began its work with very ambitious plans, hoping to get financial support for interviewing older members of the Association and the preparation of special studies on particular aspects of the Association's work. However, financial belt-tightening had already begun in Washington, and other projects appeared to have a higher priority. Accordingly the Committee fell back on methods that had proved effective since the time of Herodotus, namely the patient and inevitably slow collection of materials by a number of scholars. Richard W. Feldmann provided a manuscript on the early history of the MONTHLY and detailed notes gleaned from examining the entire back files of the AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL MONTHLY. Harriet F. Montague and Kenneth O. May examined the files of the Association at the University of Buffalo. Robert E. Horton and Winifred Wisan supplied information about the MATHEMATICS MAGAZINE. Many colleagues took time for conversations about the Association with editors or authors. Others made suggestions and helped track down information. With the cooperation of Lyle E. Mehlenbacher, chairman of the Committee on Sections, section officers were asked to supply local historical information. They responded magnificently and the chapter on the Sections was the first to be completed in September of 1968. The last manuscript to arrive came early in 1971. Gregory H. Moore prepared the appendices from examining the MONTHLY and materials supplied by the national office of the Association. ν I hope that the patience of the Board of Governors and others anxious to see the history appear will be rewarded by the final result. We realize, of course, that this is not a "complete history", something that can never be written in any case. Many interesting aspects of the development of mathematics in the United States and of the history of the Association are unmentioned or incompletely developed: the early history of American mathematics in the nineteenth century, foreign influences, the rapid development toward the end of the nineteenth century, the gradual attainment of independence by American centers, the motivations and differences of opinion concerning the founding of the Association (in reviewing the manuscript, Dirk Struik wrote "The whole early MONTHLY and MAA movement seems to have been strongly midwest. What was the reason? Eastern snootiness? Or just a fresh prairie wind blowing over the grassroots country?"), the reasons for and the degree of success of the attack on mathematics in the twenties, the consequences of that attack as they became evident in the early years of World War II, the influence of the refugees from Europe before World War II, and so on. We hope that scholars will be inspired to investigate these and other matters further and to communicate their findings in the pages of the Association journals or in booklength studies. The forthcoming eighty-year index of the MONTHLY will facilitate such researches. KENNETH O. MAY, Editor Note on citations: References to the AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL MONTHLY are given in square brackets in the form [MONTHLY, volume in bold face, pages]. Arabic numerals in square brackets refer to footnotes at the end of the chapters. When the footnote number is followed by a semi-colon and numerals, the latter give page references within the cited publication. vi CONTENTS I. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND FOUNDING OF THE ASSOCIATION Phillip S.Jones, 1 II. THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS Carl B. Boyer, 24 III. WORLD WAR II Emory P. Starke, 55 IV. FROM 1946 TO 1965 Robert A. Rosenbaum, 62 V. THE SECTIONS, Harriet F. Montague, 78 VI. FINANCIAL HISTORY, Harry M. Gehman, 104 APPENDICES 1. Constitution and By-Laws, 112 2. Officers, 125 3. Committees, 127 4. Publications, 134 5. Films, 141 6. Earle Raymond Hedrick Lectures, 142 7. National Meetings: 1915-1965. 143 8. Membership, 147 9. Awards and Competitions, 150 10. Finances, 153 INDEX, 157 Yll CHAPTER I. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND FOUNDING OF THE ASSOCIATION Phillip S. Jones 1. COLLEGIATE MATHEMATICS IN THE COLONIAL YEARS TO 1800. Two colleges, Harvard (1636) and William and Mary (1693), were founded prior to 1700 in what was to become the United States. Eleven more were added by the time of the Revolutionary War, and seventeen more, for a total of thirty, had their beginnings prior to the nineteenth century [31; 738-743]. These colleges were small, often with fewer than 100 students, with a correspondingly small staff which had to teach all subjects. Their entrance requirements were limited by the background of their students, boys 15 and 16 years of age whose preparation for college often was tutoring in Latin and Greek by local ministers. College curricula were limited by their entrance requirements, the purposes of the colleges, and the background of their faculties. The Boston Latin Grammar School was founded in 1635. By 1700 about thirty New England towns had such schools [20; 18]. These grammar schools had some public support, but tended to be modeled after English grammar schools and to be attended by children of wealthy families. They l 2 PHILLIP S. JONES taught chiefly Latin and literature with some attention to writing in preparation for college and careers in the ministry, medicine, or law. Later, some arithmetic was introduced into the grammar schools by public demand, but pre-college instruction in arithmetic was likely to have been received from private tutors, singly or in special classes. However, the number and quality of these schools were such that Cajori [8; 74] remarked in discussing the early history of Dartmouth College (founded in 1769) that "As in other localities, so in New Hampshire, the means of fitting for college were very imperfect and many of the college studies were inadequately pursued". In fact, three of Dartmouth's first class had attended the Indian Charity School in Lebanon, New Hampshire. The need for training children to be merchants, artisans, surveyors, and navigators led to a decline in support for the grammar schools which was accelerated by the opposition to taxes associated with the Revolutionary War. A new type of secondary school began to develop rather slowly with the founding of the first academy by Benjamin Franklin in 1749-1751. The academies were more practical in their orientation and taught mathematics for three purposes: immediate use, college preparation, and mental discipline. The academies did not develop extensively until the latter half of the nineteenth century. Our present free public high schools also began to develop, largely in the North, after the Civil War. The secondary school situation was reflected in college entrance requirements. The first mathematical entrance requirement was arithmetic, required at Yale in 1745, at Princeton in 1760, and at Harvard in 1807. In 1816 Harvard moved on to require "the whole of arithmetic", having asked only for the four fundamental operations, "reduction", and "the rule of three" in 1807. Algebra was added to Harvard's entrance requirements in 1820, but geometry was not required by colleges until after the Civil War. The entrance requirements and the general low regard for mathematics were reflected in collegiate curricula. The early colleges had no electives. The only mathematics taught at Harvard in 1642 consisted of arithmetic and geometry taught on Mondays and Tuesdays from ten to eleven for three quarters to students in the third and final year of the curriculum. They studied astronomy in the fourth quarter. These subjects were taught by Henry Dunster, president of the college, in medieval style, reading from a text and expounding on the more difficult passages. He taught in English rather than Latin because mathematics was considered more practical than scholarly [19; 141, 209]! When Harvard instituted a four year program, mathematics was moved to the last year. As late as 1726 the only mathematics taught at Yale was a smattering of arithmetic and surveying in the senior year. In 1748 Yale required some mathematics in the second and third years. A study of student manuscript HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND FOUNDING OF THE ASSOCIATION 3 notebooks shows that algebra entered instruction as early as 1730 at Harvard, 1750 at Princeton, and 1788 at the University of Pennsylvania [24]. Some- thing of conies and fluxions was taught as early as 1758.

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