Dan Pedoe, on Geometrical Matters, P 67-74Mathschron009-008.Pdf
ON GEOMETRICAL MATTERS Dan Pedoe Dedicated to H.G. Forder on his 90th birthday (received 29 June, 1979) Geometers are sadly aware of the present depressed state of their art. The "new" math, swept elementary geometry aside, in a frantic effort to keep up with the Russians, who had convinced the Western world of their technological superiority by launching Sputnik. The "educators" who led American mathematics disregarded, or were sublimely unconscious of the fact that Russian high schools, then and now, study geometry intensely. Yaglom's new book [16]reveals the extent to which the best high schools in Russia plumb non-Euclidean geometry. In America, publishers demand an assured sale of at least 50,000 copies for any book on elementary mathematics before they will handle it, and only calculus books and such make the grade. Any book on geometry, inadvertently published, only sells to a limited extent, and if the publisher has "inventory problems", (that is, if he suffers from a lack of warehouse space, and who does not?), books are soon pulped. Fortunately there are still University Presses, and the excellent Chelsea and Dover publishers who keep books in print, and Forder's remarkable Calculus of Extension [4] is still obtainable, although some of his early books on geometry have vanished. One of my pulped books, Circles, has been reprinted, with added problems and solutions, by Dover Books [10]. Those who defend the present state of mathematics are quick to point out that a lot of geometry is still being studied and taught, under chapter headings such as "combinatorics", "tesselations", and so on.
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