Anita Burdman Feferman (July 27, 1927 – April 9, 2015) was an American
historian of mathematics and biographer, known for her biographies of
Jean van Heijenoort and (with her husband, logician
Solomon Feferman) of
Alfred Tarski.
Life
Feferman was born on July 27, 1927. She was originally from
Los Angeles, and attended
Hollywood High School
Hollywood High School is a four-year public secondary school in the Los Angeles Unified School District, located at the intersection of North Highland Avenue and West Sunset Boulevard in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles, California.
Histo ...
and the
University of California, Los Angeles before earning a bachelor's degree in 1948 from the
University of California, Berkeley. She became a schoolteacher in the
Oakland, California school system, and earned another degree in teaching from UC Berkeley. In 1956 her husband
Solomon Feferman took a position at
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
, and she moved with him and their two daughters from the
East Bay to the
San Francisco Peninsula. She died on April 9, 2015.
Books
At Stanford, Feferman became a member of a biography seminar led by
Barbara A. Babcock
Barbara Allen Babcock (July 6, 1938 – April 18, 2020) was the Judge John Crown Professor of Law, Emerita, at Stanford Law School. She was an expert in criminal and civil procedure and was a member of the Stanford Law School faculty from 1972 ...
and
Diane Middlebrook. Her first biography, of
Jean van Heijenoort, was ''Politics, Logic, and Love: The Life of Jean van Heijenoort'' (Jones and Bartlett, 1993), also published as ''From Trotsky to Gödel: The Life of Jean van Heijenoort'' (CRC Press, 2001). With Solomon Feferman, she was the co-author of a biography of
Alfred Tarski, ''Alfred Tarski: Life and Logic'' (Cambridge University Press, 2004).
References
External links
Feferman (Anita Burdman) Papers Stanford University Archives, via Online Archive of California
{{DEFAULTSORT:Feferman, Anita Burdman
1927 births
2015 deaths
University of California, Berkeley alumni
American biographers
American historians of mathematics