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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 also left an impressive legacy as a historian of mathematics, with a specialization in ancient mathematics. And Neugebauer was born on May 26, 1899 in Innsbruck, Austria – so it is time to celebrate his life and his legacy. Continue reading →

Posted in Anniversaries, History of Mathematical Reviews, Mathematicians | Leave a comment

Mathematical Moments

Posted on May 9, 2016 by Edward Dunne

The AMS Public Awareness office has a wonderful series of short bursts of mathematics, which are available as posters titled “Mathematical Moments“. Mike Breen comes up with the topics and writes the texts for the posters. He also has a knack for finding clever titles. Many of the posters have to do with some piece of mathematics that has relevance for everyday life. All of them portray interesting, usually deep mathematics in a way that most non-mathematicians can appreciate. They are also very popular in Mathematics Departments†. In what follows, I want to highlight a few of the Mathematical Moments and use MathSciNet to dig more deeply into their subjects. 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 in 1948 in a remarkable paper titled, “A Mathematical Theory of Communication“. Below, I will reproduce Joseph Doob‘s review of Shannon’s famous paper. Continue reading →

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MathOverflow and MathSciNet

Posted on April 17, 2016 by Edward Dunne

Earlier, I posted about adding MR links to Wikipedia pages. The point of that post was that it was fairly simple to add a link to MathSciNet while editing a Wikipedia page. In March 2014, Scott Morrison, a MathOverflow user (and moderator), created an add-on that used MathSciNet to verify and insert a reference in a post to MathOverflow. You can read about it on MathOverflow here. Now, MathOverflow has made a version of Morrison’s citation helper a built-in feature of the site. 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 a student of Hans Reichenbach, who was also active in both mathematics and philosophy. Putnam has 52 publications in MathSciNet. Putnam also wrote more than a dozen reviews for Mathematical Reviews. Continue reading →

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Keep Good Company

Posted on February 17, 2016 by Edward Dunne

Lars Ahlfors Fields Medalist and Reviewer for MR

Over the course of Mathematical Reviews’ 75-year history, there have been many famous researchers who were also active reviewers. As pointed out by Norman Richert in his article Mathematical Reviews Celebrates 75 Years, the first issue of Mathematical Reviews (in January 1940) had some prominent mathematicians as reviewers, including: Lars Ahlfors, Richard Courant, Paul Erdős, Einar Hille, Alston S. Householder, D. H. Lehmer, Saunders Mac Lane, George Pólya, and John von Neumann. The complete roster is here. Fortunately for Mathematical Reviews, many prominent mathematicians have written reviews – sometimes a lot of reviews – over the years. This post lists some award-winning mathematicians and gives links to their reviews. Continue reading →

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Report from the Joint Meeting in Seattle

Posted on January 29, 2016 by Edward Dunne

The Joint Mathematics Meetings are over. There were lots of good talks. Lots of good books. Lots of good mathematical art. Overall, there were lots of good things. The AMS has posts about the meetings on the AMS Facebook page. You can also see the old newsletters from the meetings on the JMM site. Here are some things directly related to Mathematical Reviews. Continue reading →

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Reviewers are getting a raise

Posted on January 14, 2016 by Edward Dunne

As of January 18, 2016, reviewers will receive 12 AMS Points for each review they submit that is published in MathSciNet. That’s a 50% raise! Mathematical Reviews very much appreciates the efforts of our reviewers. We feel quite strongly that good reviews make us great.

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Personalizing your author profile: update

Posted on January 11, 2016 by Edward Dunne

Earlier, I wrote a post about updating your Author Profile Page on MathSciNet. In his most recent newsletter, Donald Knuth makes a nice mention of the profile page, in particular to the full-name and native script feature. For those of you who know Knuth’s books, it should come as no surprise that the native script feature was inspired by Knuth. Indeed, Professor Knuth was very generous and helped us out tremendously with the feature. Thank you Donald Ervin Knuth (高銘纳)!

Posted in Short posts, Tips and Tricks | 1 Comment

Mathematical Reviews at JMM in Seattle

Posted on December 28, 2015 by Edward Dunne

The Joint Mathematics Meetings are being held January 6-9, 2016 in Seattle. There is always a lot going on at the meetings: invited lectures, special sessions, editorial meetings, exhibits, and the chance to connect with old friends. Mathematical Reviews is planning several activities during the meetings. Most will be at the Mathematical Reviews area of the AMS booth in the exhibit hall, Hall 4A, Level 4, Washington State Convention Center. All are encouraged to stop by the booth for conversation with editors, questions, impromptu demos, giveaways, and more. We will be glad to see you. Continue reading →