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Carl Benjamin Boyer

Carl Benjamin Boyer was an American historian of mathematics, dubbed the "Gibbon of math history" by novelist David Foster Wallace. He was one of few historians of mathematics of his time to "keep open links with contemporary history of science."

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Carl Benjamin Boyer
Born(1906-11-03)November 3, 1906
Hellertown, Pennsylvania,
United States
DiedApril 26, 1976(1976-04-26) (aged 69)
Brooklyn, New York
Known forBooks on the history of mathematics
Academic background
Alma materColumbia University
Academic work
DisciplineHistory of mathematics
InstitutionsBrooklyn College

Carl Benjamin Boyer (November 3, 1906 – April 26, 1976) was an American historian of mathematics,1 dubbed the "Gibbon of math history" by novelist David Foster Wallace.2 He was one of few historians of mathematics of his time to "keep open links with contemporary history of science."3: 161 

Early life and education

Boyer was born in Hellertown, Pennsylvania, on November 3, 1906, and graduated as valedictorian of his high school class. He received a bachelor's degree from Columbia College in 1928 and started working as a tutor at Brooklyn College in the same year. From Columbia University, he earned his master's degree in 1929 and his doctorate in history in 1939.1 He was a full professor of mathematics at Brooklyn College from 1952 until his death.4: 380–1 

Career

Along with Carolyn Eisele of CUNY's Hunter College; C. Doris Hellman of the Pratt Institute, and later City University of New York's Queens College; and Lynn Thorndike of Columbia University, Boyer was instrumental in the 1953 founding of the Metropolitan New York Section of the History of Science Society.5

In 1954, Boyer was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship to further his work in the history of science, in particular, the history of the study of rainbows.6

Boyer wrote the books The History of the Calculus and Its Conceptual Development (1959), with a foreword was written by Richard Courant,7 which was originally published as The Concepts of the Calculus (1939);8 History of Analytic Geometry (1956);9 and The Rainbow: From Myth to Mathematics (1959).10

Boyer published A History of Mathematics in 1968. After he died in 1976, Uta Merzbach, a historian of mathematics at the Smithsonian Institution, took responsibility for revising and updating the text. The second edition appeared in 1991, with a foreword by Isaac Asimov.11 She released the third edition in 2011.1213 Reviewers praised this book for its broad and accessible coverage of interesting developments from antiquity to the modern era.1113 However, the third edition contains no exercises at the end of each chapter.13 Jason Graham noted that readers interested in more technical details could supplement the book with A History of Mathematics (2009) by Victor Katz or The Fontana History of the Mathematical Sciences (1997) by Ivor Grattan-Guinness.13

In 1965, Boyer was appointed associate editor of the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, which was being planned by the American Council of Learned Societies.1 He also served as book-review editor of Scripta Mathematica, published by Yeshiva University.14

Personal life and death

He was married to Marjorie Boyer (née Nice), a professor of history. Boyer died of a heart attack at his home Brooklyn, New York, on April 26, 1976. He was 69 years old.1

In 1978, Boyer's widow established the Carl B. Boyer Memorial Prize, to be awarded annually to an undergraduate at Columbia University who was not an American citizen for the best essay on a scientific or mathematical topic.15

References

References

  1. "Carl Boyer dies, a mathematician". The New York Times. April 27, 1976. p. 37. Archived from the original on November 16, 2022. Retrieved March 20, 2026.
  2. Wallace, David Foster. "An excerpt from Everything and More". Archived from the original on 2012-02-19. Retrieved 2007-08-28.
  3. Remmert, Volker R.; Schneider, Martina R.; Sørensen, Henrik Kragh (2016-12-08). Historiography of Mathematics in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Birkhäuser. ISBN 978-3-319-39649-1.
  4. Dauben, Joseph W.; Scriba, Christoph J., eds. (2002). Writing the History of Mathematics: Its Historical Development. Birkhäuser. ISBN 978-3-764-36167-9.
  5. Gleason, Mary Louise (1999) "The Metropolitan New York Section of the History of Science Society", Isis, Vol. 90, Supplement: Catching up with the Vision: Essays on the Occasion of the 75th Anniversary of the Founding of the History of Science Society, pp. S200-S218. University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society
  6. Staff (May 3, 1954) "Guggenheim Fund Grants $1,000,000" The New York Times
  7. Boyer, Carl B. (2012) [1959]. The History of the Calculus and Its Conceptual Development. New York: Dover. ISBN 978-0-486-60509-8.
  8. Boyer, Carl B. (1949). The Concepts of the Calculus. New York: Hafner Pub. Co. OCLC 1425849052.
  9. Boyer, Carl B. (1956). History of Analytic Geometry. New York: Scripta Mathematica. OCLC 260863.
  10. Boyer, Carl B. (1959). The Rainbow from Myth to Mathematics. New York: T. Yoseloff. OCLC 538512.
  11. Acker, Kathleen (July 2007). "Review: A History of Mathematics". Convergence. Mathematical Association of America.
  12. Boyer, Carl B.; Merzbach, Uta (2011). A History of Mathematics (3rd ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-470-52548-7.
  13. Graham, Jason M. (April 17, 2017). "A History of Mathematics". MAA Reviews. Mathematical Association of America.
  14. Scripta Mathematica. 1950. Retrieved 2007-10-21.
  15. "Columbia College Bulletin:Prizes and Fellowships". Archived from the original on 2002-10-01. Retrieved 2009-02-20.
Further reading

Further reading

External links