Steve Batterson – författare

At the turn of the twentieth century, mathematical scholarship in the United States underwent a stunning transformation. In 1890, no American professor was producing mathematical research worthy of international attention. Graduate students were then advised to pursue their studies abroad. By the start of World War I, the standing of American mathematics had radically changed. George David Birkhoff, Leonard Dickson, and others were turning out cutting edge investigations that attracted notice in the intellectual centers of Europe. Harvard, Chicago, and Princeton maintained graduate programs comparable to those overseas. This book explores the people, timing, and factors behind this rapid advance.Through the mid-nineteenth century, most American colleges followed a classical curriculum that, in mathematics, rarely reached beyond calculus. With no doctoral programs of any sort in the United States until 1860, mathematical scholarship lagged far behind that in Europe. After the Civil War, visionary presidents at Harvard and Johns Hopkins broadened and deepened the opportunities for study. The breakthrough for mathematics began in 1890 with the hiring, in consecutive years, of William F. Osgood and Maxime Bôcher at Harvard and E. H. Moore at Chicago. Each of these young men had studied in Germany where they acquired vital mathematical knowledge and taste. Over the next few years, Osgood, Bôcher, and Moore established their own research programs and introduced new graduate courses. Working with other like-minded individuals through the nascent American Mathematical Society, the infrastructure of meetings and journals were created. In the early twentieth century, Princeton dramatically upgraded its faculty to give the United States the stability of a third mathematics center. The publication by Birkhoff, in 1913, of the solution to a famous conjecture served notice that American mathematics had earned consideration with the European powers of Germany, France, Italy, England, and Russia.

"The Institute for Advanced Study occupies a unique position among institutions of higher learning. An account of its early years is long overdue, so the appearance of the present volume, during the 75th anniversary of the Institute's founding, is most welcome. Batterson has mined the Institute's archives to provide a detailed and unvarnished account of the backstage conflicts and intrigue that attended the Institute's growth and determined its future. Those unfamiliar with the Institute will learn how one man's vision shaped a couple's philanthropy and created a haven for scholars in the midst of the Great Depression. Equally, those who have had the privilege of Institute membership will enhance their appreciation of the intellectual leaders who made their own Institute experiences possible." ---John W. Dawson, Jr., author of Logical Dilemmas: The Life and Work of Kurt Gödel