Underwood Dudley (born January 6, 1937) is an American
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 ...
. His popular works include several books describing
crank mathematics by people who think they have
squared the circle or done other impossible things.
Career
Dudley was born in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
. He received
bachelor's and
master's
A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice. degrees from the
Carnegie Institute of Technology
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...
and a
PhD from the
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
. His academic career consisted of two years at
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 ...
followed by thirty-seven at
DePauw University
DePauw University is a private liberal arts university in Greencastle, Indiana. It has an enrollment of 1,972 students. The school has a Methodist heritage and was originally known as Indiana Asbury University. DePauw is a member of both the ...
, from which he retired in 2004. He edited the ''
College Mathematics Journal
The ''College Mathematics Journal'' is an expository magazine aimed at teachers of college mathematics, particular those teaching the first two years. It is published by Taylor & Francis on behalf of the Mathematical Association of America and is ...
'' and the ''Pi Mu Epsilon Journal'', and was a Pólya Lecturer for the
Mathematical Association of America (MAA) for two years. He is the discoverer of the
Dudley triangle.
Publications
Dudley's popular books include ''
Mathematical Cranks'' (MAA 1992, ), ''The Trisectors'' (MAA 1996, ), and ''Numerology: Or, What Pythagoras Wrought'' (MAA 1997, ). Dudley won the
Trevor Evans Award
The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) is a professional society that focuses on mathematics accessible at the undergraduate level. Members include university, college, and high school teachers; graduate and undergraduate students; pure a ...
for expository writing from the MAA in 1996.
Dudley has also written and edited straightforward mathematical works such as ''Readings for Calculus'' (MAA 1993, ) and ''Elementary Number Theory'' (W.H. Freeman 1978, ).
Lawsuit
In 1995, Dudley was one of several people sued by William Dilworth for
defamation because ''Mathematical Cranks'' included an analysis of Dilworth's "A correction in set theory", an attempted refutation of
Cantor's diagonal method. The suit was dismissed in 1996 due to failure to state a claim.
The dismissal was upheld on appeal in a decision written by jurist
Richard Posner
Richard Allen Posner (; born January 11, 1939) is an American jurist and legal scholar who served as a federal appellate judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit from 1981 to 2017. A senior lecturer at the University of Chic ...
. From the decision: "A
crank is a person inexplicably obsessed by an obviously unsound idea—a person with a bee in his bonnet. To call a person a crank is to say that because of some quirk of temperament he is wasting his time pursuing a line of thought that is plainly without merit or promise ... To call a person a crank is basically just a colorful and insulting way of expressing disagreement with his master idea, and it therefore belongs to the language of controversy rather than to the language of defamation."
Caselaw: United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit, ruling on Dillworth vs. Dudley, 1996
/ref>
See also
* Pseudomathematics
References
External links
*
*
''DePauw University News'' story on Underwood Dudley and his "crank file"" (with photo)
Review of Hans Walser's ''The Golden Section'' by Underwood Dudley
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dudley, Underwood
1937 births
Living people
20th-century American mathematicians
21st-century American mathematicians
American folklorists
Carnegie Mellon University alumni
University of Michigan alumni
DePauw University faculty
Ohio State University faculty
Pseudomathematics