Joan Livingston Richards (born 1948) is an American historian of mathematics and a professor of history at Brown University, where she directs the Program of Science and Technology Studies.
Education and career
Richards graduated magna cum laude from Radcliffe College in 1971. She completed a Ph.D. in the history of science at Harvard University in 1981. Her dissertation, Non-Euclidean Geometry In Nineteenth-century England: A Study of Changing Perceptions of Mathematical Truth, was supervised by I. Bernard Cohen.
After postdoctoral research at Cornell University, she joined the Brown University faculty in 1982, and was promoted to full professor in 2001.
Books
Richards is the author of the monograph Mathematical Visions: The Pursuit of Geometry in Victorian England (Academic Press, 1988) and of a memoir on her struggle to balance her academic work with caring for a son with a brain tumor, Angles of Reflection: Logic and a Mother's Love (W. H. Freeman, 2000).
She is the co-editor of The Invention of Physical Science: Intersections of Mathematics, Theology and Natural Philosophy since the Seventeenth Century, Essays in Honor of Erwin N. Hiebert (with Mary Jo Nye and Roger H. Stuewer, Kluwer, 1992).
References
- Birth year from Library of Congress catalog entry, retrieved 2020-09-05
- Joan L. Richards, Brown University Department of History, retrieved 2020-09-05
- ^ Curriculum vitae (PDF), Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, August 2018, retrieved 2020-09-05
- Joan L. Richards at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- Reviews of Mathematical Visions:
- Majumdar, P. K., zbMATH, Zbl 0654.01002
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: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link) - Grattan-Guinness, Ivor (June 1989), "English-style geometries", Nature, 339 (6223): 349, Bibcode:1989Natur.339..349G, doi:10.1038/339349a0, S2CID 4257086
- McCleary, John (17 November 1989), "Euclid unseated", Science, New Series, 246 (4932): 940, doi:10.1126/science.246.4932.940, JSTOR 1704814, PMID 17812578
- Scholz, Erhard (1990), Mathematical Reviews, MR 0968441
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: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link) - Banchoff, Thomas (Summer 1990), Victorian Studies, 33 (4): 662–664, JSTOR 3827805
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: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link) - Lewis, Albert C. (August 1990), Historia Mathematica, 17 (3): 272–278, doi:10.1016/0315-0860(90)90015-6
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: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link) - Crilly, Tony (September 1990), The British Journal for the History of Science, 23 (3): 338–340, doi:10.1017/S000708740004406X, JSTOR 4026763, S2CID 144906937
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: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link) - Jongsma, Calvin (September 1990), Isis, 81 (3): 585–586, doi:10.1086/355505, JSTOR 233472
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: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link) - Lambert, Kenneth A. (1991), History of European Ideas, 13 (1–2): 145–146, doi:10.1016/0191-6599(91)90122-F
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: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link) - Tattersall, J. J. (September 1991), The College Mathematics Journal, 22 (4): 355–356, doi:10.2307/2686243, JSTOR 2686243
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: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link) - Price, M. H. (May 1992), Annals of Science, 49 (3): 288–291, doi:10.1080/00033799200200271
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: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
- Majumdar, P. K., zbMATH, Zbl 0654.01002
- Reviews of Angles of Reflection:
- "Nonfiction book review", Publishers Weekly
- Bonomo, Joe (2000), Creative Nonfiction, 16: 138–143, JSTOR 44362966
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: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link) - Sutton, Jennifer (July–August 2000), "The maternal equation", Brown Alumni Magazine
- Heller, Scott (20 October 2000), "A historian's tale, and a mother's, too", The Chronicle of Higher Education
- Luhrmann, Tanya (21 January 2001), "Human Equation: A mathematician faces a world of uncertainties in her son's illness", The New York Times
- Rauff, James V. (March 2001), The Mathematics Teacher, 94 (3): 238, JSTOR 20870647
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: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link) - Fox, Michael (November 2002), The Mathematical Gazette, 86 (507): 562–563, doi:10.2307/3621196, JSTOR 3621196, S2CID 186248043
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- Review of The Invention of Physical Science:
- Smith, Crosbie (March 1995), Annals of Science, 52 (2): 209–211, doi:10.1080/00033799500200191
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: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
- Smith, Crosbie (March 1995), Annals of Science, 52 (2): 209–211, doi:10.1080/00033799500200191
- 1948 births
- Living people
- American historians
- 20th-century American mathematicians
- 21st-century American mathematicians
- American historians of mathematics
- Radcliffe College alumni
- Harvard University alumni
- Brown University faculty
- 20th-century American women mathematicians
- 21st-century American women mathematicians