Carl Benjamin Boyer (November 3, 1906 – April 26, 1976) was an American historian of sciences, and especially mathematics. Novelist

David Foster Wallace David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and university professor of English and creative writing. Wallace is widely known for his 1996 novel '' Infinite Jest'', whi ...

called him the "

Gibbon Gibbons () are apes in the family Hylobatidae (). The family historically contained one genus, but now is split into four extant genera and 20 species. Gibbons live in subtropical and tropical rainforest from eastern Bangladesh to Northeast Indi ...

math Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

history". It has been written that he was one of few historians of mathematics of his time to "keep open links with contemporary history of science."

Life and career

Boyer was

valedictorian Valedictorian is an academic title for the highest-performing student of a graduating class of an academic institution. The valedictorian is commonly determined by a numerical formula, generally an academic institution's grade point average (GPA) ...

of his

high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

class. He received a B.A. from Columbia College in 1928 and an

M.A. A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...

in 1929. He received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Columbia University in 1939. He was a full professor of Mathematics at the

City University of New York The City University of New York ( CUNY; , ) is the public university system of New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States, comprising 25 campuses: eleven senior colleges, seven community colleges and seven pro ...

Brooklyn College , mottoeng = Nothing without great effort , established = , parent = CUNY , type = Public university , endowment = $98.0 million (2019) , budget = $123.96 m ...

from 1952 until his death, although he had begun tutoring and teaching at Brooklyn College in 1928. Along with Carolyn Eisele of CUNY's

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admin ...

;

C. Doris Hellman Clarisse Doris Hellman Pepper (August 28, 1910 – March 28, 1973) was an American historian of science, "one of the first professional historians of science in the United States". She specialized in 16th and 17th century astronomy, wrote a bo ...

of the

Pratt Institute Pratt Institute is a private university with its main campus in Brooklyn, New York. It has a satellite campus in Manhattan and an extension campus in Utica, New York at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute. The school was founded in 1887 ...

, and later CUNY's

Queens College Queens College (QC) is a public college in the Queens borough of New York City. It is part of the City University of New York system. Its 80-acre campus is primarily located in Flushing, Queens. It has a student body representing more than 170 ...

; and

Lynn Thorndike Lynn Thorndike (24 July 1882, in Lynn, Massachusetts, USA – 28 December 1965, Columbia University Club, New York City) was an American historian of medieval science and alchemy. He was the son of a clergyman, Edward R. Thorndike, and the young ...

of Columbia University, Boyer was instrumental in the 1953 founding of the Metropolitan New York Section of the

History of Science Society The History of Science Society (HSS) is the primary professional society for the academic study of the history of science. It was founded in 1924 by George Sarton, David Eugene Smith, and Lawrence Joseph Henderson, primarily to support the publi ...

. In 1954, Boyer was the recipient of a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the art ...

to further his work in the history of science. In particular, the grant made reference to "the history of the theory of the rainbow". Boyer wrote the books ''The History of the Calculus and Its Conceptual Development'' (1959), originally published as ''The Concepts of the Calculus'' (1939), ''History of Analytic Geometry'' (1956), ''The Rainbow: From Myth to Mathematics'' (1959), and ''A History of Mathematics'' (1968). He served as book-review editor of ''

Scripta Mathematica ''Scripta Mathematica'' was a quarterly journal published by Yeshiva University devoted to the philosophy, history, and expository treatment of mathematics. It was said to be, at its time, "the only mathematical magazine in the world edited by spe ...

''. Boyer died of a

heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which ma ...

in New York City in 1976. In 1978, Boyer's widow, the former Marjorie Duncan Nice, a professor of history, established the Carl B. Boyer Memorial Prize, to be awarded annually to a

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

undergraduate for the best essay on a scientific or mathematical topic.

References

Notes Further reading *Boyer, Carl B. (August 30–September 6, 1950). Lecture
"The Foremost Textbook of Modern Times."
International Congress of Mathematicians, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Retrieved on 2009-02-20. *Boyer, Carl B. (1949)
The history of the calculus and its conceptual development
Hafner Publishing Company, New York, ed. Dover 1959. Retrieved on 2010-03-30.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Boyer, Carl Benjamin 1906 births 1976 deaths 20th-century American mathematicians American historians of mathematics 20th-century American historians 20th-century American male writers Columbia College (New York) alumni Columbia University alumni Brooklyn College faculty American male non-fiction writers Educators from Pennsylvania People from Lehigh County, Pennsylvania Writers from Pennsylvania