Turbulent Times in Mathematics: The Life of J.C. Fields and the History of the Fields Medal - Softcover

Elaine Mckinnon Riehm; Frances Hoffman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0821869140 ISBN 13: 9780821869147

Publisher: American Mathematical Society, 2011

Synopsis

One of the little-known effects of World War I was the collapse of international scientific cooperation. In mathematics, the discord continued after the war's end and after the Treaty of Versailles had been signed in 1919. Many distinguished scientists were involved in the war and its aftermath, and from their letters and papers, now almost a hundred years old, we learn of their anguished wartime views and their struggles afterwards either to prolong the schism in mathematics or to end it. J.C. Fields, the foremost Canadian mathematician of his time, was educated in Canada, the United States, and Germany, and championed an international spirit of cooperation to further the frontiers of mathematics. It was during the awkward post-war period that J.C. Fields established the Fields Medal, an international prize for outstanding research, which soon became the highest award in mathematics. J. C. Fields intended it to be an international medal, and a glance at the varying backgrounds of the fifty-two Fields medallists shows it to be so. Who was Fields? What carried him from Hamilton, Canada West, where he was born in 1863, into the middle of this turbulent era of international scientific politics? A modest mathematician, he was an unassuming man. This biography outlines Fields' life and times and the difficult circumstances in which he created the Fields Medal. It is the first such published study. A co-publication of the AMS and Fields Institute.

About this title

Review

This highly readable nonmathematical biographical study is a triumph of tenacity. It sheds significant light on the personal life, professional development, and lasting legacy of the foremost Canadian mathematician of his time. --Isis

John Charles Fields is a little-known Canadian. He deserves to be better known. Turbulent Times in Mathematics: The Life of J.C. Fields and the History of the Fields Medal, a fine biography and account of his career and work by Elaine McKinnon and Frances Hoffman, may help to rectify that situation. ... The authors of this book have done a superb job with exhaustive attention to the details of the history, both of Fields's efforts and of the mathematical organizations. --Douglas Wright, Literary Review of Canada

...[Riehm and Hoffman] provide a richly contextualized picture of the historical times in which Fields lived. Turbulent Times in Mathematics offers an engaging narrative of Fields' struggle to further Canadian science and to make a lasting contribution to mathematics, a subject he clearly loved. --Sylvia Nickerson, Historica Mathematica

Edition details

• Publisher: American Mathematical Society
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0821869140
• ISBN 13: 9780821869147
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 258