Carl Benjamin Boyer (November 3, 1906 – April 26, 1976) was an American historian of sciences, and especially mathematics. Novelist David Foster Wallace called him the " Gibbon of math history". It has been written that he was one of few historians of mathematics of his time to "keep open links with contemporary history of science."

Life and career

Boyer was valedictorian of his high school class. He received a

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

from Columbia College in 1928 and an

M.A. A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. ...

in 1929. He received his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

in Mathematics from Columbia University in 1939. He was a full professor of Mathematics at the City University of New York's

Brooklyn College , mottoeng = Nothing without great effort , established = , parent = CUNY , type = Public university , endowment = $98.0 million (2019) , budget = $123.96 m ...

from 1952 until his death, although he had begun tutoring and teaching at Brooklyn College in 1928. Along with

Carolyn Eisele Carolyn Eisele (June 13, 1902 – January 15, 2000) was an American mathematician and historian of mathematics known as an expert on the works of Charles Sanders Peirce.... Education and career Eisele was born on June 13, 1902, in The Bronx, ...

of CUNY's

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admin ...

;

C. Doris Hellman Clarisse Doris Hellman Pepper (August 28, 1910 – March 28, 1973) was an American historian of science, "one of the first professional historians of science in the United States". She specialized in 16th and 17th century astronomy, wrote a bo ...

of the Pratt Institute, and later CUNY'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 The History of Science Society (HSS) is the primary professional society for the academic study of the history of science. It was founded in 1924 by George Sarton, David Eugene Smith, and Lawrence Joseph Henderson, primarily to support the public ...

. In 1954, Boyer was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship to further his work in the history of science. In particular, the grant made reference to "the history of the theory of the rainbow". Boyer wrote the books ''The History of the Calculus and Its Conceptual Development'' (1959), originally published as ''The Concepts of the Calculus'' (1939), ''History of Analytic Geometry'' (1956), ''The Rainbow: From Myth to Mathematics'' (1959), and ''A History of Mathematics'' (1968). He served as book-review editor of ''

Scripta Mathematica ''Scripta Mathematica'' was a quarterly journal published by Yeshiva University devoted to the philosophy, history, and expository treatment of mathematics. It was said to be, at its time, "the only mathematical magazine in the world edited by spe ...

''. Boyer died of a heart attack in New York City in 1976. In 1978, Boyer's widow, the former Marjorie Duncan Nice, a professor of history, established the Carl B. Boyer Memorial Prize, to be awarded annually to a Columbia University undergraduate for the best essay on a scientific or mathematical topic.

References

Notes Further reading *Boyer, Carl B. (August 30–September 6, 1950). Lecture
"The Foremost Textbook of Modern Times."
International Congress of Mathematicians, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Retrieved on 2009-02-20. *Boyer, Carl B. (1949)
The history of the calculus and its conceptual development
Hafner Publishing Company, New York, ed. Dover 1959. Retrieved on 2010-03-30.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Boyer, Carl Benjamin 1906 births 1976 deaths 20th-century American mathematicians American historians of mathematics 20th-century American historians 20th-century American male writers Columbia College (New York) alumni Columbia University alumni Brooklyn College faculty American male non-fiction writers Educators from Pennsylvania People from Lehigh County, Pennsylvania Writers from Pennsylvania