Robert Lee Moore (mathematician)

Robert Lee Moore

Robert Lee Moore (born November 14, 1882 in Dallas , Texas , † October 4, 1974 in Austin , Texas; often quoted RL Moore ) was an American mathematician who dealt with topology . He is known in the USA for the Moore method of teaching mathematics.

Life

Moore, son of a small shopkeeper who came from New England , but fought on the side of the Confederate in the Civil War, studied mathematics at the University of Texas from 1898 under George Bruce Halsted and Leonard Dickson . After graduating in 1901, he taught in high schools . He solved a Halstead problem by showing that one of David Hilbert's axioms of geometry was superfluous. Eliakim Hastings Moore (who was not related to him) from the University of Chicago heard about it and made sure that he was able to do his doctorate in 1905 in Chicago with Oswald Veblen ( Sets of metrical hypotheses for geometry ). After teaching activities at the University of Tennessee , two years at Princeton University and three years at Northwestern University , he taught at the University of Pennsylvania from 1911 to 1916 and then from 1916 until his official retirement in 1969 at the University of Texas at Austin, where he became associate professor in 1920 and professor in 1923. He built his own school of topologists there, which he taught according to the Moore method. He was still teaching when he was well over 80 years old (from 1951 after the retirement age with half pay, in 1969 he was finally retired) and had 50 doctoral students, including well-known representatives of geometric topology such as RH Bing and Edwin Moise .

At times his method of teaching math was very influential in the United States. He used textbooks as little as possible and also kept the lectures short, but the students (each in isolation) were supposed to solve problems and develop the material as much as possible themselves (under the guidance of the teacher, who intervened from time to time and also should motivate). His motto: "That student is taught the best that is taught the least". The method was z. B. also used by Paul Halmos . Halmos reports in his autobiography that a favorite quote from Moore was the Chinese proverb “I hear, I forget. I see, I remember. I do, I understand ”(“ I forget what I hear, what I see, I remember what I do, I understand ”).

From 1936 to 1938 he was President of the American Mathematical Society , whose Colloquium Lecturer he was in 1929 and whose Colloquium Publications he edited from 1929 to 1933. In 1973 the Moore Hall of the University of Texas in Austin was named after him, where the mathematicians, physicists and astronomers are housed. In 1931 he was accepted into the National Academy of Sciences .

He was a racist and refused to teach black students; He demonstratively left the room when a black mathematician was lecturing. At the University of Austin, Moore was involved in a feud with number theorist Harry Vandiver for decades (beginning in the 1930s) . In addition to the above-mentioned R. H. Bing and Edwin Moise, other doctoral students of his are Mary Ellen Rudin , Gordon Thomas Whyburn , Raymond Louis Wilder , Robert Henry Sorgefrey , RH Anderson, F. Burton Jones and John R. Kline.

literature

• John Parker RL Moore- mathematician and teacher , Mathematical Association of America, 2005 (on the Moore Method, Review by Peter Ross in Mathematical Intelligencer 2007, No. 4)
• RL Moore Foundations of point set topology , AMS, 1932, 1970
• Leo Corry A clash of mathematical titans in Austin: Harry S. Vandiver and Robert Lee Moore (1924-1974) , Mathematical Intelligencer, 2007, No. 4, p. 62

Web links

• The legacy of RLMoore , with explanations of the Moore method and references

References

1. ^ "I want to be a mathematician" 1985
2. ↑ "RLMoore- racist mathematician unveiled"
3. ↑ Or scared them off with words like "You are welcome to take my course but you start with a C and can only go down from there", quotation from SWWilliams according to the website given in the footnote