Dirk Struik

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Dirk Jan Struik (born September 30, 1894 in Rotterdam , † October 21, 2000 in Belmont , Massachusetts ) was a Dutch mathematician who was known as a mathematician.

life and work

Struik was the son of a teacher and went to school in Rotterdam. In 1919 he joined the Communist Party and remained a party member until the end of his life. From 1912 he studied at the University of Leiden , a. a. with Paul Ehrenfest and Hendrik Antoon Lorentz . He then worked for a while as a teacher in Alkmaar , before receiving his doctorate in 1922 under Jan Schouten (whose assistant he was) and Willem van der Woude ( basics of multi-dimensional differential geometry in direct representation ). In 1923 he became a lecturer in Utrecht . In the same year he married the Czech mathematician Ruth Ramler.

In 1924 he was on a Rockefeller scholarship in Rome with Tullio Levi-Civita and in 1925 at the University of Göttingen with Richard Courant , with whom he attended the lectures of Felix Klein (who had just died on his arrival) on the history of mathematics in the 19th century. Century published.

From 1926 he was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (at the same time he was offered a professorship in Moscow), where he devoted himself partly to differential geometry (with Norbert Wiener ) and partly to the history of mathematics. In 1940 he became a professor at MIT. During the McCarthy era he refused to testify, had to pay $ 1,000 and was suspended from MIT for five years until 1955 (albeit with full pay). In 1960 he retired from MIT, but was not allowed to continue teaching there. But Struik taught z. B. at Harvard University (from 1972 as Honorary Research Associate), Mexico, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica and Utrecht.

In 1930 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

He was considered the Nestor the mathematician historian, gave lectures when he was over 100 years old and was 106 years old.

In addition to textbooks on differential geometry, he also wrote two standard works on the history of mathematics. He is co-founder of a Marxist journal on the history of science, "Journal of Science and Society". Struik also published the works of Simon Stevin and dealt historically with Karl Marx , some of whom he reissued.

In 1989 he received the first Kenneth O. May Prize for the History of Mathematics from the International Commission on the History of Mathematics.

He had three daughters, one of whom became a math professor.

Fonts

  • A Concise History of Mathematics , 1948, many editions, Dover 1987, ISBN 0486602559 .
  • Outline of the History of Mathematics. 7th edition, Berlin, VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften 1980 (western licensed edition: 4th edition, Braunschweig 1967, ISBN 978-3-322-96078-8 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-322-96212-6 )
  • A Sourcebook of Mathematics 1200-1800. Princeton University Press 1986 (and Harvard University Press 1969).
  • Lectures on Classical Differential Geometry , 1950, 2nd edition, Addison-Wesley 1961, Dover 1988, ISBN 0486656098 .
  • with Jan Schouten: Introduction to the new methods of differential geometry. 2 volumes, Noordhoff, Groningen 1935–38.
  • Basic features of the multi-dimensional differential geometry in direct representation. Springer-Verlag 1922, doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-642-50680-2 .
  • The Birth of the Communist Manifesto. 1971.
  • Yankee Science in the Making - Science and Engineering in New England from Colonial Times to the Civil War , 1948, Dover 1992, ISBN 0486269272 .
  • The Land of Stevin and Huygens - a sketch of science and technology in the Dutch Republic during the Golden Century. Reidel, Dordrecht 1981.
  • Theory of linear connections. Springer-Verlag 1934, doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-642-50799-1 .
  • Analytic and Projective Geometry. Addison-Wesley 1953.
  • Interview, Mathematical Intelligencer Volume 11, Issue 1, 1989, pp. 14-26, doi : 10.1007 / BF03023771 .

literature

  • RS Cohen, JJ Stachel, Marx W. Wartofsky (Eds.): For Dirk Struik. Scientific, Historical and Political Essays in Honor of Dirk J. Struik. Reidel, Dordrecht a. a. 1974, ISBN 90-277-0393-0 , ( Boston studies in the philosophy of science 15), ( Synthesis library 61).
  • G. Alberts: On connecting socialism and mathematics. Dirk Struik, Jan Burgers and Jan Tinbergen. In: Historia Mathematica 21, 1994, ISSN  0315-0860 , pp. 280-305.
  • David E. Rowe : Dirk Jan Struik and his contributions to the history of mathematics. In: Historia Mathematica 21, 1994, ISSN  0315-0860 , pp. 245-273.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ When he was about a hundred years old, when asked how he could get that old, he cited the three M's: Marriage, Marxism, Mathematics. Sometimes he just replied succinctly, "I didn't die".
personal data
SURNAME Struik, Dirk
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Struik, Dirk Jan (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH September 30, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Rotterdam
DATE OF DEATH October 21, 2000
Place of death Belmont , Massachusetts