2012 Whiteman Prize

2012 Whiteman Prize Joseph Warren Dauben received the 2012 AMS them to early Western mathematics and make them Albert Leon Whiteman Memorial Prize at the 118th understandable to the modern reader. “Chinese Annual Meeting of the AMS in Boston in January mathematics,” his contribution to The Mathemat- 2012. ics of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, and Islam (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2007), is Citation the fruit of twenty years of scholarship and, at The American Mathematical Society is pleased to nearly 200 pages, is a book in its own right. Dauben award the Albert Leon Whiteman Prize to Joseph studies the history of modern Chinese mathemat- Warren Dauben for his contributions ics as well; see, for example, his chapter “Modern to the history of Western and Chinese science emerges in China” in Mathematics Un- mathematics and for deepening and bound: The Evolution of an International Math- broadening the international mathematical Research Community, 1800–1945 (History ematical community’s awareness of Mathematics, 23, Karen Hunger Parshall and and understanding of its history and Adrian L. Rice, editors, American Mathematical So- culture. “In truth mathematics can ciety, Providence, RI; London Mathematical Society, be called the Pleasure Garden of the London, 2002). He is an elected Honorary Professor myriad forms, the Erudite Ocean of of the Institute for the History of Natural Science the Hundred Schools of Philosophy,” (a branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences) and said the sixteenth-century mathema- lectures there regularly. tician Xu Guangqi. Joe Dauben’s work In Writing the History of Mathematics: Its His- illuminates his epigram. torical Development (Sci. Networks Hist. Stud., Dauben’s first book, Georg Can- 27, Birkhäuser, Basel, 2002), Dauben and coeditor tor: His Mathematics and the Phi- Christoph Scriba engage historians of mathematics around the world to show how the practice of Joseph W. Dauben losophy of the Infinite (Harvard Uni- versity Press, Cambridge, MA, 1979; writing history of mathematics has varied from reprinted, Princeton University Press, country to country and era to era and how this Princeton, 1990), is a clear, readable, detailed, historiography is intertwined with the philo- richly textured history of Cantor’s development sophical, scientific, and industrial demands of of transfinite numbers and, at the same time, an time and place. In the United States, the history insightful but nonreductive account of the com- of mathematics, once an excellent but eclectic plex and difficult personality that brought this collection of teaching tools and postretirement revolution about. His second biography, Abraham projects, has in the last decades become an inte- Robinson: The Creation of Nonstandard Analysis, gral component of the mathematical community, A Personal and Mathematical Odyssey (Princeton with well-attended sessions at major meetings. University Press, Princeton, 1995), is another Joe Dauben has spurred this professionalism by near-impossible feat of scholarship and exposi- his scholarly example and through his service tion. Dauben traces Robinson’s nonstandard path to the profession, which includes organizing from his birthplace in Germany to his death in international workshops and symposia and editing New Haven, via Palestine, Paris, London, Toronto, Historia Mathematica for a decade. Jerusalem, and Los Angeles, again intertwining the Like his list of published articles, the list of Joe mathematician and his mathematics. Dauben’s honors is long. We are proud to add the While writing Abraham Robinson, Dauben Whiteman Prize to it. began a study of “Ten Classics of Ancient Chinese Biographical Sketch Mathematics”, a 656 CE edition of texts taught throughout Chinese history, in order to relate Joseph W. Dauben is Distinguished Professor of History and the History of Science at Herbert H. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1090/noti828 Lehman College and a member of the Ph.D. Program 572 NOTICES OF THE AMS VOLUME 59, NUMBER 4 in History at the Graduate Center of the City had himself been a student at USC and was the University of New York. He is a fellow of the New reason I had applied there as one of my choices for York Academy of Sciences, a membre effectif of graduate school. But, having grown up in south- the International Academy of History of Science, a ern California, the offer Harvard made to pursue corresponding member of the German Academy of my doctorate there in history of science proved Sciences Leopoldina, and a member of the Society irresistible, and in the fall of 1966 I found myself of Fellows of the American Academy in Rome. He on the East Coast, in Cambridge, where there was has been editor of Historia Mathematica, an inter- a lively, if small but in retrospect remarkable, national journal for the history of mathematics, concentration of historians of mathematics. The and chairman of the International Commission Department for History of Science, one of the first on the History of Mathematics. He is the author in the country, had just been established, and I was of Georg Cantor, His Mathematics and Philosophy among the earliest groups to join the new depart- of the Infinite (Harvard University Press, Cam- ment, along with my friend, colleague, and fellow bridge, MA, 1979; reprinted, Princeton University historian of mathematics Wilbur Knorr. Wilbur Press, Princeton, 1990) and Abraham Robinson: and I were very fortunate to have been trained by, The Creation of Nonstandard Analysis, a Personal among others, John Murdoch and Judith Grabiner, and Mathematical Odyssey (Princeton University who prepared us with tutorials for just the two Press, Princeton, 1995), both of which have been of us for our oral examinations prior to working translated into Chinese. Among his most recent on our Ph.D.’s, which I did under the direction of publications is the monographic study of one of Erwin Hiebert and Dirk Struik. While at Harvard, the most ancient works of Chinese mathematics, I was also fortunate to have worked with Richard “Suan shu shu. A book on numbers and compu- Brauer, who took an interest in my thesis on Can- tations. English translation with commentary” tor and whose own memories of mathematics in (Archive for History of Exact Sciences 62 (2008), Germany were always helpful to me in getting right no. 2, 91–178). A graduate of Claremont McKenna the historical sense of the times in which Cantor College, magna cum laude, in mathematics and of had lived, especially his later years. If Brauer said Harvard University (A.M. and Ph.D.) in history of something I had written sounded correct to him, science, Dauben has been a member of the Insti- I felt it must be pretty close to the mark. Later, tute for Advanced Study (Princeton) and Clare Hall another Harvard mathematician, Garrett Birkhoff, (Cambridge University), where he was affiliated would likewise prove very helpful when the subject with the Needham Research Institute. He has been of my research turned to a biography of Abraham the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Senior Robinson. Birkhoff had known Robinson and was NEH and ACLS Fellowships, and was named Out- interested in the historical implications of non- standing Teacher of the Year at Lehman College in standard analysis. Wim Luxumburg at Caltech and 1986. He is an honorary member of the Institute for George Seligman at Yale were also colleagues and History of Natural Sciences of the Chinese Acad- good friends of Robinson and likewise mathemati- emy of Sciences, where he was the Zhu Kezhen cians to whom I am grateful for their reading of Visiting Professor in spring of 2005. In 2010 he the history I was writing. was Visiting Research Professor at the Institute for This is all by way of saying that, for historians Humanities and Social Sciences at National Chiao- of mathematics, our best audiences and most Tung University in Hsinchu (Taiwan). valuable collaborators are our mathematician colleagues. In the course of my career as a his- Response from Joseph Warren Dauben torian of mathematics, I have also learned the Albert Leon Whiteman was a mathematician with craft from many of my colleagues, who have been a passion for number theory and an abiding inter- both inspirational and supportive. I was indeed est in the history of mathematics. He was Hans fortunate to have several of what in Germany is Rademacher’s first student at the University of called the Doktorvater, beginning with my mentor Pennsylvania and a Benjamin Peirce instructor at at Harvard, I. Bernard Cohen, whose own interest Harvard before taking up a position in 1948 at the in history of mathematics included the work of University of Southern California, where he spent Isaac Newton but also the great revolution in the rest of his career. I might have been one of his computers that led him to serve as IBM’s chief graduate students, for USC was one of the universi- historical consultant. That led to several summers ties where I was accepted to continue as a graduate when both Wilbur Knorr and I, among a number student in mathematics after I had completed my of graduate students, were employed to work for undergraduate degree in 1966 at Claremont McK- IBM on a massive history of computing database enna College in southern California. I had studied that Cohen was overseeing. mathematics there with John Ferling, Granville In Berlin, when I was there for a year doing archi- Henry, and Janet Myhre and wrote my senior thesis, val research for my dissertation on Georg Cantor which later would prove to be especially useful, and the origins of transfinite set theory, Kurt R. as it turned out, on nonstandard analysis. Ferling Biermann, director of the Alexander von Humboldt APRIL 2012 NOTICES OF THE AMS 573 Forschungsstelle at the Deutsche Akademie der York for a second doctorate in history of science Wissenschaften in what was then East Berlin, took after having already completed a Ph.D.

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