Brian Rotman is a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

-born

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

who works in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. Trained as a

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

and now an established

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

, Rotman has blended semiotics, mathematics and the history of writing in his work and teaching throughout his career. He is currently a distinguished

humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the t ...

professor in the department of

comparative studies Cross-cultural studies, sometimes called holocultural studies or comparative studies, is a specialization in anthropology and sister sciences such as sociology, psychology, economics, political science that uses field data from many societies thr ...

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

, has also taught at Stanford and given invited lectures at universities throughout the United States including

Berkeley Berkeley most often refers to: *Berkeley, California, a city in the United States **University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California * George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher Berkeley may also refer ...

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

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Stanford 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 considere ...

Duke Duke is a male title either of a monarch ruling over a duchy, or of a member of royalty, or nobility. As rulers, dukes are ranked below emperors, kings, grand princes, grand dukes, and sovereign princes. As royalty or nobility, they are ran ...

, Notre Dame,

Penn State #Redirect Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campu ...

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...

, and

Cornell Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

. Rotman’s best known books include ''Signifying Nothing: The Semiotics of Zero'' which provides a wide-ranging exploration of the zero sign, ''Ad Infinitum... The Ghost in Turing’s Machine'', and ''Theory of Sets and Transfinite Numbers'' (written jointly with G. T. Kneebone)

Life

Rotman grew up above and inside his father’s sweet and

tobacco Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...

shop in

Brick Lane Brick Lane (Bengali: ব্রিক লেন) is a street in the East End of London, in the borough of Tower Hamlets. It runs from Swanfield Street in Bethnal Green in the north, crosses the Bethnal Green Road before reaching the busiest ...

in the

East End of London The East End of London, often referred to within the London area simply as the East End, is the historic core of wider East London, east of the Roman and medieval walls of the City of London and north of the River Thames. It does not have uni ...

. He studied mathematics at the

University of Nottingham The University of Nottingham is a public university, public research university in Nottingham, United Kingdom. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. The University of Nottingham belongs t ...

, after which he taught the subject at a grammar school, a technical college and then for 20 years at

Bristol University , mottoeng = earningpromotes one's innate power (from Horace, ''Ode 4.4'') , established = 1595 – Merchant Venturers School1876 – University College, Bristol1909 – received royal charter , type ...

, along the way obtaining an M.Sc in the foundations of mathematics and a Ph.D in combinatorial mathematics. During this time he wrote, with G. T. Kneebone, a graduate textbook on set theory, ''The Theory of Sets and Transfinite Numbers'', as well as numerous papers on ordered structures and

Boolean algebra In mathematics and mathematical logic, Boolean algebra is a branch of algebra. It differs from elementary algebra in two ways. First, the values of the variables are the truth values ''true'' and ''false'', usually denoted 1 and 0, whereas in e ...

s, and in 1977 published ''

Jean Piaget Jean William Fritz Piaget (, , ; 9 August 1896 – 16 September 1980) was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called " genetic epistemolog ...

: Psychologist of the Real'' an exposition and critique of the ideas behind the work of the Swiss child psychologist. In 1979 he co-founde
Mouth and Trousers
a London fringe theatre company based at the ''York and Albany'' pub in

Camden Town Camden Town (), often shortened to Camden, is a district of northwest London, England, north of Charing Cross. Historically in Middlesex, it is the administrative centre of the London Borough of Camden, and identified in the London Plan as o ...

, which operated for nearly four years during which time he wrote several stage plays. In 1984 he left Bristol and mathematics teaching and worked in London as a free-lance copy writer until the stock market crash of 1987 put an end to such work. In that year his essay ''Signifying Nothing: the Semiotics of Zero'' on the cultural significance of the mathematical zero sign was published. In 1990 he and his wife Lesley Ferris, an American theatre director and academic, and their two daughters, emigrated to the United States and lived in

Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the seat of Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-mos ...

for 6 years. During this time, he gained expertise in the classroom training the young and spirited minds of calculus students at

Memphis University School , motto_translation = Truth and Honor , streetaddress = 6191 Park Avenue , city = Memphis , state = Tennessee , zipcode = 38119 , province = , country = United States , coordinates ...

(a distinguished "school for boys") during the 1995-1996 school year. In 1991 he published ''Ad Infinitum ... the Ghost in Turing’s Machine'' – a polemic against the ‘naturalness’ of the natural numbers. In the following years he received fellowships from Stanford Humanities Center, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies. From 1996 to 1998 he was a professor of interdisciplinary studies in the English department at

Louisiana State University Louisiana State University (officially Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as LSU) is a public land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The university was founded in 1860 nea ...

in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and in 1998 moved to Columbus, Ohio to join the faculty of the Ohio State University, first as a professor in the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD) and then as a member of the department of Comparative Studies. His students have called him both stunning and eccentric, and keen to bend disciplines. In 2000 he published ''Mathematics as Sign: Writing, Imagining, Counting'', a collection of essays which gathered his writings on the semiotics of mathematics. More recently his work has focused on the gestural dimension of thought, inner speech, and the psychic effects produced by technological media, some of which, that concerned with the medium of writing, is elaborated in the book ''Becoming Beside Ourselves'' referred to above. In November 2012 he was invited by Goldsmiths College in London to choreograph a mathematical dance piece entitled Ordinal 5, which was performed at the Tate Modern.

References

Notes

External links

Rotman's website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rotman, Brian Year of birth missing (living people) Ohio State University faculty Stanford University faculty Living people Academics of the University of Bristol 20th-century British mathematicians 21st-century British mathematicians Alumni of the University of Nottingham British emigrants to the United States Alumni of the University of London Louisiana State University faculty