Category Archives: Mathematicians

Karen Smith

Posted on March 18, 2017 by Edward Dunne

Karen Smith is a mathematician at the University of Michigan, which is where she also did her Ph.D.  Her thesis was on tight closure, an important topic in commutative algebra.  There is, of course,  a lot of overlap between commutative algebra and … Continue reading →

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Quanta Magazine

Posted on March 5, 2017 by Edward Dunne

Quanta Magazine, from the Simons Foundation, has been publishing some excellent articles about mathematics.  It is not a research journal, so Mathematical Reviews doesn’t cover it.  Nevertheless, if you want to dig deeper into some of the mathematical issues discussed … Continue reading →

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AMS Prizes and Awards – 2017

Posted on December 4, 2016 by Edward Dunne

The AMS is announcing the winners of some of the major prizes that they will award at the upcoming Joint Mathematical Meetings in Atlanta (January 4-7, 2017).  The Joint Prize Session, where prizes from the various participating societies will be presented, … Continue reading →

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Links with the MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive

Posted on November 6, 2016 by Edward Dunne

One of the great – and oldest – resources for mathematics on the web is the MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive.  Before there was Wikipedia, there was MacTutor.  It was founded by two mathematicians, John J. O’Connor and Edmund F. Robertson, both … Continue reading →

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Jonathan Borwein

Posted on August 3, 2016 by Edward Dunne

Jonathan Borwein passed away on August 1st.  He was a prolific mathematician, with 427 publications as of this writing.  He was also quite broad, publishing in number theory, operations research, calculus of variations, and many other subjects.  Many people knew … Continue reading →

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Happy Birthday, Otto Neugebauer

Posted on May 25, 2016 by Edward Dunne

Without Otto Neugebauer, there would be no MathSciNet.  He was the founder of both Zentralblatt für Mathematik (1931) and Mathematical Reviews (1940).   Neugebauer lived an extraordinary life during extraordinary times.  He knew and worked with some of the great mathematicians of the twentieth century.  Neugebauer … Continue reading →

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Happy Birthday, Claude Shannon

Posted on April 30, 2016 by Edward Dunne

Claude Shannon is famous among mathematicians and computer scientists for his remarkable work, particularly in the realm of  information theory.  Of particular importance is Shannon’s notion of information entropy, often referred to now as “Shannon entropy”.  He launched the theory … Continue reading →

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Hilary Putnam, reviewer

Posted on March 30, 2016 by Edward Dunne

Hilary Putnam has died.  There is a notice on the AMS website and an obituary in the New York Times.  Wikipedia has a long entry for Putnam. He was widely known as a philosopher, but he was also an active mathematician.  He was … Continue reading →

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Happy Birthday, Isaac Newton

Posted on December 24, 2015 by Edward Dunne

Isaac Newton was born on December 25, 1642 (according to the Julian Calendar in use in Great Britain at the time; in the Gregorian Calendar now used, that would be January 4, 1643).  When I lived in the UK in … Continue reading →

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John Wehausen and his in-depth look at surface waves

Posted on October 28, 2015 by Edward Dunne

 John V. Wehausen was the fifth Executive Editor at Mathematical Reviews, from 1950 to 1956.  Wehausen has connections to the University of Michigan (BS and PhD) and to Brown (instructor), both of which institutions were hosts to Mathematical Reviews at one time or another. … Continue reading →

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