James R. Newman (Author)

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James Roy Newman (* 1907 in New York City ; † 1966 ) was an American lawyer, known for contributions to popular science mathematics literature.

Newman graduated from Columbia University and was a lawyer in New York State. He practiced there from 1929 to 1941. During World War II, he worked for the US government, including as Chief Intelligence Officer at the American Embassy in London, as Special Assistant to the Undersecretary of War and legal advisor to the US Senate Committee on Atomic Energy. He was a legal advisor to the US Senate Committee on Atomic Energy. In the latter capacity he was involved in the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 , which placed atomic energy under civilian control.

In 1948 he became a member of the editorial board of Scientific American and served on the editorial board of The New Republic .

Together with the mathematician Edward Kasner , who was also his teacher in New York, he published the book Mathematics and the imagination in 1940 and edited the four-volume anthology The world of mathematics with essays on mathematics from many centuries (after the subtitle of the book by the Egyptian Scribe Ahmose to Albert Einstein). In 1958 his book about Gödel's incompleteness theorem appeared with the philosophy professor at Columbia University Ernest Nagel (whom Newman referred to as his friend and teacher), which is considered a successful attempt to make it generally understandable. A new edition, edited by Douglas R. Hofstadter , appeared in 2001. He also published books on warfare and control of atomic energy, a book warning of the nuclear weapons policy and war hysteria of the West (1962) and science in general.

He was a visiting professor at Yale Law School and a Guggenheim Fellow.

Fonts

  • Editor with Kasner: The World of Mathematics , 4 volumes, Simon and Schuster, 1956, Reprint Dover 2003
  • with Kasner: Mathematics and the Imagination , New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940
  • The Tools of War , Doubleday, Doran and Company 1942
  • with Byron S. Miller: The Control of Atomic Energy , McGraw Hill 1948
  • as editor: What is Science , London: Victor Gollancz 1955
  • with Ernest Nagel: Gödel's Proof , 1958, new edition by Douglas R. Hofstadter, NYU Press 2001
    • German edition: Der Gödelsche proof , Oldenbourg 1964, 7th edition 2003
  • Science and Sensibility , 1961
  • The Rule of Folly , Simon and Schuster 1962
  • Publisher: The International Encyclopedia of Science , 4 volumes, Harper 1963 (as The Harper Encyclopedia of Science ), London: Nelson 1965

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Biographies, Trove, National library of Australia
  2. ↑ Brief biography in Gateway to the great books , Encyclopedia Britannica, Volume 9, p. 118
  3. ^ A b c biography of Newman in his book The World of Mathematics
  4. ^ Acknowledgments in Newman (ed.), The world of mathematics.
personal data
SURNAME Newman, James R.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Newman, James Roy (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American lawyer and author of mathematics literature
DATE OF BIRTH 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH 1966