Ivor Grattan-Guinness

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Grattan-Guinness, Oberwolfach 2006

Ivor Grattan-Guinness (born June 23, 1941 in Bakewell , Derbyshire , Great Britain , † December 12, 2014 ) was a British mathematician.

Live and act

Grattan-Guinness was the son of a mathematics teacher, went to school in Huddersfield and studied mathematics in Oxford from 1959 (Bachelor degree 1962) and at the London School of Economics mathematical logic and philosophy of science (Master degree 1966). After completing his bachelor's degree, he worked for Marconi on missile defense systems and taught at Enfield College of Technology in North London from 1964. In 1969 he received his PhD in the History of Science from the University of London, and in 1978 he received his D.Sc. His dissertation was on The development of the foundations of mathematical analysis from Euler to Riemann, for which he studied French mathematicians such as Joseph Fourier and Augustin-Louis Cauchy (and was at the Mittag-Leffler Institute in Stockholm) and with the heirs of Georg Cantor in Connection came to study his manuscripts. His doctoral supervisor was Cyril Offord (an expert in measure theory who was also very interested in Cantor) and he was also advised and promoted by Edward Collingwood . He stayed at Enfield College when it became Middlesex Polytechnic (1973) and Middlesex University (1992). There he was a reader and from 1993 professor for the history of mathematics and logic. In 2002 he retired and was Professor Emeritus. In 1978 he was a Fulbright Scholar and in 1979 at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton . He is an associate at the London School of Economics and has been a member of the Académie internationale d'histoire des sciences since 1991 .

Since it was founded in 1974, he has been co-editor of Historia Mathematica. In 1979 he founded the journal History and Philosophy of Logic, of which he was editor until 1992. From 1974 to 1981 he was editor of the Annals of Science and then on its editorial board. From 1977 to 1993 he was on the Executive Committee of the International Commission on the History of Mathematics. He has been a corresponding member of the International Academy of the History of Science since 1986 and a full member since 1991. From 1986 to 1988 he was President of the British Society for the History of Mathematics. In 2010 he became an honorary member of the Bertrand Russell Society.

Ivor Grattan-Guinness, Paris , 2003

As a mathematics historian, he was primarily concerned with the history of mathematical logic, the basics of mathematics and the basics of analysis, especially in the French school at the beginning of the 19th century, whereby he also emphasized the interaction of mathematics with its applications. In his dissertation he dealt with basic mathematical research up to the first half of the 19th century. His thesis in his dissertation that Cauchy took over the foundations of analysis from Bernhard Bolzano without quoting him (i.e. plagiarized) was not adopted by most historians. In later books he dealt with basic mathematical research from Cantor to Bertrand Russell and Kurt Gödel and he also published a three-volume monograph on the development of mathematics in connection with its applications in physics and engineering in revolutionary France with the establishment of the Ecole Polytechnique and other universities until the first half of the 19th century, with Fourier and Cauchy playing a special role. In the third volume he also printed many sources.

In 2009 he received the Kenneth O. May Prize . He died of heart failure on December 12, 2014 at the age of 73 .

He was a good pianist and sang intermittently in the BBC Choral Society and later sang in other choirs with his wife. In 1965 he married Enid Nedville. He last lived in Bengeo in Hertford.

Grattan-Guinness had nine PhD students, including Niccolò Guicciardini .

Fonts

  • The Development of the Foundations of Mathematical Analysis from Euler to Riemann . MIT Press 1970 (the book arose from his dissertation).
  • Towards a biography of Georg Cantor , Annals of Science, Volume 27, 1971, pp. 345-391
  • with Jerome R. Ravetz: Joseph Fourier 1768-1830 . MIT Press, 1972 (with critical edition of Fourier's price paper on heat propagation from 1807).
  • Bolzano, Cauchy and the "new analysis" of the early nineteenth century , Archive for History of Exact Sciences, Volume 6, 1970, pp. 372-400.
  • Dear Russell - Dear Jourdain: a Commentary on Russell's Logic, Based on His Correspondence with Philip Jourdain . Duckworth, London 1977 (correspondence between Philip Jourdain and Bertrand Russell )
  • Editor with HJM Bos, R. Bunn, JW Dauben. TW Hawkins, K. Moller Pedersen: From the Calculus to Set Theory, 1630-1910: An Introductory History . Duckworth, 1980, Princeton University Press, 2000.
  • as editor: Psychical Research: A Guide to Its History, Principles & Practices - in celebration of 100 years of the Society for Psychical Research , Aquarian Press 1982
  • Convolutions in French Mathematics, 1800-1840. From the Calculus and Mechanics to Mathematical Analysis and Mathematical Physics . 3 volumes, Birkhäuser, 1990.
  • The Rainbow of Mathematics: A History of the Mathematical Sciences . Fontana 1997, WWNorton 1999.
  • The Search for Mathematical Roots 1870-1940: Logics, Set Theories, and the Foundations of Mathematics from Cantor through Russell to Gödel . Princeton University Press, 2000.
  • Editor: Companion Encyclopedia of the History and Philosophy of the Mathematical Sciences . 2 volumes, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.
  • Editors (and contributions): Landmark Writings in Western Mathematics , Elsevier, 2004.
  • Decline, then recovery. An overview over the history of mathematics in the 20th century , History of Science, Volume 42, 2004, pp. 279-312
  • The engineer savant, 1800-1830. A neglected figure in the history of french mathematics and science , Science in context, Volume 6, 1993, pp. 405-433
  • From anomaly to fundament: Louis Poinsot's theories of the couple in mechanics , Historia Mathematica, Volume 82, 2014, 82-102
  • Editor: Routes of Learning: Highways, Pathways, and Byways in the History of Mathematics , Johns Hopkins University Press 2009

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tony Crilly: Ivor Grattan-Guinness obituary. In: The Guardian of December 31, 2014 (accessed January 1, 2015).
  2. ↑ The essay sparked a debate with Hans Freudenthal, among others, because of his thesis that Cauchy plagiarized Bolzano.
personal data
SURNAME Grattan-Guinness, Ivor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH June 23, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Bakewell , Derbyshire , UK
DATE OF DEATH December 12, 2014