Lynn Arthur Steen

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Lynn Arthur Steen (born January 1, 1941 in Chicago , Illinois , † June 21, 2015 in Minneapolis , Minnesota ) was an American mathematician and math teacher.

Life

Steen grew up in Staten Island and studied at Luther College (Bachelor in 1961) and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he received his doctorate in 1965 under Kenneth Hoffman ( Uniform approximation by rational functions ). He was then assistant professor and from 1975 professor at St. Olaf College . In 1971/72 he was a visiting scientist at the Mittag-Leffler Institute .

In 1980/81 he was Vice President and 1985/86 President of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), and in 1992 he received its Distinguished Service Award. He was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science . From 1970 to 1992 Steen was co-editor of the American Mathematical Monthly and 1976 to 1980 editor of Mathematics Magazine . He was a member and from 1992 to 1995 chairman of the Mathematical Sciences Education Board of the National Research Council.

He is known for various popular science books on mathematics and books on mathematics education - especially for pleading to promote elementary arithmetic skills in school lessons (quantitative literacy). He also wrote a book with Arthur Seebach on counterexamples in topology and authored math articles for Science News and Encyclopedia Britannica .

In 1973 and 1974 he received the Lester Randolph Ford Award . He received honorary doctorates from Luther College, Wittenberg University (1991) and Concordia College in Minnesota. He was a fellow of the American Mathematical Society .

Steen had been married since 1963 and had two daughters.

Fonts

  • with J. Arthur Seebach Jr. Counterexamples in Topology , Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1970, 2nd edition, Springer Verlag 1978, Reprint Dover 1995
  • Editor: Mathematics Today- twelve informal essays , Springer Verlag 1978, Vintage Books 1980
  • Editor Mathematics Tomorrow , Springer Verlag 1981
  • Achieving quantitative literacy: an urgent challenge for higher education , MAA 2004
  • Editor: Mathematics and democracy: the case for quantitative literacy , National Council on Education and the Disciplines (NECD), Princeton 2001
  • Why numbers count: quantitative literacy for tomorrow's America , College Entrance Examination Board, New York 1997
  • Editor On the shoulders of giants: new approaches to numeracy , Mathematical Sciences Education Board, Washington DC, National Academy Press 1990 (in it: Pattern )
  • Publisher Calculus for a New Century: A pump, not a filter , Washington DC, MAA 1988
  • Editor For all practical purposes: introduction to contemporary mathematics , WH Freeman 1991
  • Editor: Math and bio 2010: linking undergraduate disciplines , MAA 2005
  • Everybody counts: Report to the Nation on the Future of Mathematics Education , National Academy Press 1989
  • The science of patterns , Science, Vol. 240, 1988, pp. 611-616
  • From counting votes to making votes count: the mathematics of elections , Scientific American, October 1980
  • New Models of the real number line , Scientific American, Volume 224, 1971

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary for Lynn Steen
  2. ↑ Lynn Arthur Steen in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)Template: MathGenealogyProject / Maintenance / name used
  3. ↑ 1974 for Highlights in the history of spectral theory , Amer. Math. Monthly 80 (1973), 359-381, and 1973 for Conjectures and counterexamples in metrization theory , Amer. Math. Monthly, 79: 113-132 (1972)
personal data
SURNAME Steen, Lynn Arthur
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mathematician and math educator
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago , Illinois
DATE OF DEATH June 21, 2015
Place of death Minneapolis , Minnesota