Lillian Rosanoff Lieber (July 26, 1886 in Nicolaiev,

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...

- July 11, 1986 in Queens,

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

) was a Russian-American mathematician and popular author."Robert Jantzen's webpage on Lieber"
/ref> She often teamed up with her illustrator husband, Hugh Gray Lieber, to produce works.

Life and career

Early life and education

Lieber was one of four children of Abraham H. and Clara (Bercinskaya) Rosanoff. Her brothers were Denver publisher Joseph Rosenberg, psychiatrist

Aaron Rosanoff Aaron Joshua Rosanoff (26 June 1878 in Pinsk, Russian Empire – 7 January 1943) was an American psychiatrist who studied psychosis and was closely associated with Eugenics Record Office and a member of the Eugenics Research Association. ...

, and chemist Martin André Rosanoff. Aaron and Martin changed their names to sound more Russian, less Jewish."Paul Dry, Publisher of her reissued books"
/ref> Lieber moved to the US with her family in 1891. She received her A.B. from Barnard College in 1908, her M.A. from Columbia University in 1911, and her Ph.D. (in chemistry) from Clark University in 1914, under Martin's direction; at Clark, Solomon Lefschetz was a classmate. She married Hugh Gray Lieber on October 27, 1926.

Career

After teaching at

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 admi ...

from 1908 to 1910, and in the New York City high school system (1910-1912, 1914-1915), she became a Research Fellow at Bryn Mawr College from 1915 to 1917; she then went on to teach at Wells College from 1917 to 1918 as Instructor of Physics (also acting as head of the physics department), and at the

Connecticut College for Women Connecticut College (Conn College or Conn) is a private liberal arts college in New London, Connecticut. It is a residential, four-year undergraduate institution with nearly all of its approximately 1,815 students living on campus. The college w ...

(1918 to 1920). She joined the mathematics department at

Long Island University Long Island University (LIU) is a private university with two main campuses, LIU Post and LIU Brooklyn, in the U.S. state of New York. It offers more than 500 academic programs at its main campuses, online, and at multiple non-residential. LIU ...

(LIU) in Brooklyn, New York (

LIU Brooklyn LIU Brooklyn is a private university in Brooklyn, New York. It is the original unit and first of two main campuses of the private Long Island University system. Campus LIU Brooklyn is located at the intersection of Flatbush and DeKalb Avenues ...

) in 1934, became department chair in 1945 (taking over from Hugh when he became Professor, and Chair, of Art at LIU ), and was made a full professor in 1947, until her retirement in 1954; she was appointed director of LIU's Galois Institute of Mathematics (later the Galois Institute of Mathematics and Art) (named for Évariste Galois) in 1934. Over her career she published some 17 books, which were written in a unique, free-verse style and illustrated with whimsical line drawings by her husband. Her highly accessible writings were praised by no less than Albert Einstein, Cassius Jackson Keyser, Eric Temple Bell, and

S. I. Hayakawa Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa (July 18, 1906 – February 27, 1992) was a Canadian-born American academic and politician of Japanese ancestry. A professor of English, he served as president of San Francisco State University and then as U.S. Senator fro ...

. Concerning her book, '' The Education of T. C. MITS'', Dorothy Canfield Fisher said:

This is quite different from any other book you ever bought... full of mathematics and full of humor... also full of a deep, healing philosophy of life, reassuring, strengthening, ndhumane..."Bookjacket of the 1944 W. W. Norton Edition of ''The Education of T. C. MITS''

She edited several volumes of Galois lectures, including Martin's ''A Practical Simplification of the Method of Least Squares'', several talks by Alonzo Church, and ''Lattice Theory'' by Garrett Birkhoff. Although Lieber retired from Long Island University in 1954, she continued to write and publish into the 1960s.

Personal obscurity

Few details of Lillian Lieber's life and career have survived, even at Long Island University. She died in Queens, New York just weeks shy of her 100th birthday. She came from a well-educated Jewish family. Details can be found in the out of print book, ''Yesterday'', that was written by her cousin

Miriam Shomer Zunser Miriam Shomer Zunser (November 25, 1882 – October 11, 1951) was an American journalist, playwright and artist. She was a significant promoter of Jewish culture prior to World War II.Goldstein, Eric L.Zunser, Miriam Shomer. ''Jewish Women in A ...

in the 1930s.

Unusual typography

In addition to enlivening her books with illustrations (or "psyquaports" ) by her husband, Hugh Gray Lieber (who was head of the Department of Fine Arts at Long Island University), Lillian often chose an unusual scheme of typography which is self-explained in this example from her Preface to ''The Education of T. C. MITS'': This is not intended to be
free verse.
Writing each phrase on a separate line
facilitates rapid reading,
and everyone
is in a hurry
nowadays.

T.C. MITS T.C. Mits (acronym for "the celebrated man in the street"), is a term coined by Lillian Rosanoff Lieber to refer to an everyman. In Lieber's works, T.C. Mits was a character who made scientific topics more approachable to the public audience. The ...

was an acronym for "The Celebrated Man In The Street," a character who, like George Gamow's Mr Tompkins, served as a device for bringing concepts in higher mathematics and physics to the general public. The MITS character was central to Lieber's populist approach to education, and she often laced her expositions with passages extolling the virtues of the democratic system.

"The Lillian Lieber Standard"

In her book, ''The Einstein Theory of Relativity'', Lillian Lieber stated her views on the inclusion of mathematics in books intended for "the celebrated man

r woman R, or r, is the eighteenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''ar'' (pronounced ), plural ''ars'', or in Irelan ...

in the streets:"

...just enough mathematics to HELP and NOT to HINDER the lay reader... Many 'popular' discussions of Relativity without any math at all have been written, but we doubt whether even the best of these can possibly give to a novice an adequate idea of what it is all about.... On the other hand, there are many ooks on relativitythat are accessible to experts only."

The Cavendish Press in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has adopted Lillian's rule of thumb with some elaboration.Cavendish Press Web Site, elaboration of th
Lillian Lieber Standard

Works

Although her works were broadly influential (including a special paperback edition of ''The Education of T. C. MITS'' that was circulated to American servicemen during World War II), they remained out of print for decades. Starting in 2007, publishe
Paul Dry Books
has reissued ''The Education of T.C. MITS'', ''Infinity'', and ''The Einstein Theory of Relativity''. *1931 ''Non-Euclidean Geometry'', Academy Press. *1932 ''Galois and the Theory of Groups'', Science Press Printing Company, Lancaster, PA. *1936 ''The Einstein Theory of Relativity'', Science Press Printing Company, Lancaster, PA. *1940 ''Non-Euclidean Geometry; or, Three Moons in Mathesis'', Science Press Printing Company, Lancaster, PA. *1942 ''The Education of T. C. MITS'', Galois Institute of Mathematics and Art, Brooklyn, NY.. *1944 ''The Education of T. C. MITS'', W. W. Norton & Company, NY, (Revised and Enlarged edition) *1945 ''The Einstein theory of Relativity'', Farrar & Rinehart, NY & Toronto. ''(Part I of this edition is the same material published in 1936. Part II was new in this edition.)'' *1946 ''Modern Mathematics for T. C. Mits, The Celebrated Man in the Street'', G. Allen & Unwin Ltd, London, 1st London Edition. *1946 ''Take a Number: Mathematics for the Two Billion'', The Jacques Cattell Press, Lancaster, PA. *1947 ''Mits, Wits and Logic'', (1st Edition) W. W. Norton & Company, NY. *1949 ''The Einstein Theory of Relativity'', D. Dobson, London. *1953, 2008 ''Infinity: Beyond the Beyond the Beyond'', Edited & Foreword by

Barry Mazur Barry Charles Mazur (; born December 19, 1937) is an American mathematician and the Gerhard Gade University Professor at Harvard University. His contributions to mathematics include his contributions to Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem in ...

, Paul Dry Books, Rinehart, NY. *1954 ''Mits, Wits, and Logic'', (Revised Edition) Galois Institute of Mathematics and Art, Brooklyn, NY. *1956 ''Human Values of Modern Mathematics a Book of Essays'', Galois Institute of Mathematics and Art, Brooklyn, NY. *1959 ''Lattice Theory: The Atomic Age in Mathematics'', Galois Institute of Mathematics and Art, Brooklyn, NY. *1960 ''Mits, Wits, and Logic'', (3d Edition) W. W. Norton & Company, NY. *1961 ''Human Values and Science, Art and Mathematics'', (1st Edition) W. W. Norton & Company, NY. *1961 ''Galois and the Theory of Groups: A Bright Star in Mathesis'', Galois Institute of Mathematics and Art, Brooklyn, NY. *1963 ''Mathematics: First S-t-e-p-s'', F. Watts, NY. *2007 ''The Education of T. C. MITS: What Modern Mathematics Means to You'', Foreword by Barry Mazur, Paul Dry Books, Philadelphia, PA. *2008 ''The Einstein theory of Relativity: A Trip To the Fourth Dimension'', Paul Dry Books, Philadelphia, PA. *2017 ''Take a Number: Mathematics for the Two Billion'', Dover Publications, Mineola, NY.

Notes

External links

Photos of Lillian Lieber and her husband, Hugh LieberImage of a letter referencing the Armed Services Edition of ''The Education of T. C. MITS''.
* ttp://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/lieber-lillian-r Biography {{DEFAULTSORT:Lieber, Lillian 1886 births Mathematics and culture Mathematics educators Mathematics writers 20th-century American mathematicians American women mathematicians 1986 deaths Ukrainian Jews Ukrainian mathematicians Ukrainian women mathematicians American Jews 20th-century American women scientists 20th-century women mathematicians Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States