A Historian Looks Back (Spectrum)

Judith Grabiner has written extensively on the history of mathematics, principally for mathematicians rather than historians. This collection of her work highlights the benefits of studying the development of mathematical ideas and the relationship between culture and mathematics. She also considers the struggles and successes of famous mathematicians with the aim of inspiring students and teachers alike. A large part of this book is the author's The Calculus as Algebra: J.-L. Lagrange, 1736–1813 which focuses on Lagrange's pioneering attempt to reduce the calculus to algebra. The nine other articles are on a broad range of other topics such as some widely held myths about the history of mathematics and the work of heavyweight mathematicians such as Descartes, Newton, Maclaurin and Lagrange. Six of these articles have won awards from the MAA for expository excellence. This collection is an inspiring resource for history of mathematics courses.

Judith V. Grabiner received her B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Chicago, M.A. in the History of Science from Radcliffe College, and Ph.D. in the History of Science from Harvard in 1966. She is a member of both Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi.

Among the many awards she has received are three Carl Allendoerfer Awards (for the best article in Mathematics Magazine, 1984, 1988, 1996), and four Lester Ford Awards (for the best article in the American Mathematical Monthly, 1984, 1998, 2005, 2009).

In 2003, she won the national Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of the Mathematical Association of America. Professor Grabiner has held a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, and two National Science Foundation fellowships.

She currently teaches at Pitzer College, one of the Claremont Colleges in Claremont, California, where she is the Flora Sanborn Pitzer Professor of Mathematics.