Kenneth O. May, 1915–1977 : His early life to 1946

Kenneth Ownsworth May graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1936 with highest honors in mathematics. The following year he received his Masters degree and became a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs, and during the next two years he traveled to England, Europe, and Russia. On his return to the United States he became active in the Communist Party, the consequences of which would plague him for years. He joined the United States Army in 1942, serving with distinction, and after the war returned to Berkeley, where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1946. He immediately accepted an assistant professorship at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, later moving to the University of Toronto.This part of May's biography focuses on the events up to his accepting a position at Carleton College. In this early phase his openness, his emphasis on good communications in the process of education, and his interest in practical procedures emerge which later set the background for his successful career as a leading historian of mathematics and the founding editor of Historia Mathematica.     

The contributions of W.A. harris Jr. to difference equations

William Ashton Harris Jr. was born December 18, 1930 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. He studied mathematics with minors in physics and appl ied mechanics (elasticity) at the University of Minnesota receiving his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1955 with the thesis "A boundary value problem for a system of ordinary linear differential equations involving powers of a parameter". His thesis advisor was Professor H.L. Turrittin.He remained at the University of Minnesota and became professor in 1968. In 1970 he moved to the University of Southern California where he stayed until his untimely death on January 8, 1998. He has held visiting appointments at several other universities.     

Felix Klein's “Erlanger Antrittsrede”: A Transcription with English Translation and Commentary

One of Felix Klein's leading interests was the role of mathematics education not only in the German universities but in the secondary schools as well. Klein played a leading role in the educational reform movements that flourished during the twenty-year period prior to World War I, and in 1908 he was elected President of the International Mathematics Instruction Commission. The “Erlanger Antrittsrede” of 1872, presented herein, gives a clear expression of Klein's views on mathematics education at the very beginning of his career. While previous writers, including Klein himself, have stressed the continuity between the Antrittsrede and his later views on mathematics education, the following commentary presents an analysis of the text together with external evidence supporting exactly the opposite conclusion.     

Brian Hartley, 1939-94

Brian Hartley began his algebraic career as one of Philip Hall'sresearch students in Cambridge. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1964,spent two post-doctoral years in the USA and, on his returnto the United Kingdom, accepted a lectureship in the newly establishedMathematics Department at Warwick University; there he was promotedto a readership in 1973. He was appointed to a chair of puremathematics at the University of Manchester in 1977 and wasHead of the Mathematics Department there from 1982–4.He was elected to the London Mathematical Society in 1968 andserved on Council from 1987–9. He won an EPSRC SeniorResearch Fellowship, but died on 8 October 1994, a few daysafter taking it up. He travelled widely and took a lively interestin other cultures and languages. His intellectual energy, enthusiasmfor algebra, direct manner and dry sense of humour endearedhim to the many mathematical friends he made around the world.He was devoted to mathematics and gave generously of his timeand energy in support of younger colleagues.     

一位鲜为人知的数学教育家——纪念胡文耀博士诞辰一百三十周年

胡文耀先生于1913年获比利时鲁汶大学的数学博士学位(博士论文有待查找).从1915年起,他投身于祖国的教育事业,在京、沪高校教授高等数学,主持全国性数学名词的审定,参与民国政府教育部的大学数学课程的确定,却于1935年中国数学会成立之际,淡出了数学界.本文拟将蒙尘近百年的胡文耀数学教育的史料公之于世,让读者走近这位鲜为人知的数学教育家.     

An interview with Laurens de Haan

Laurens de Haan was born January 15, 1937 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He graduated 1966 in mathematics and received a doctoral degree in 1970 from the University of Amsterdam, while working at the Mathematical center CWI in Amsterdam. Since 1973 he was Professor for probability and mathematical statistics at the Econometric Institute of the Economic Faculty at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, where he retired 1998. Since 2008 he is part-time professor at the Department of Econometrics and Operations Research of Tilburg University. Laurens de Haan has been active in research throughout his career. He has published more than 110 scientific papers. Among other distinctions, he was elected IMS fellow for his seminal contributions to extreme value theory in 1977, and he was appointed Honorary Doctor of the University of Lisbon in 2000.     

Scan Statistics on Enron Graphs

We introduce a theory of scan statistics on graphs and apply the ideas to the problem of anomaly detection in a time series of Enron email graphs. Previous presentation: Workshop on Link Analysis, Counterterrorism and Security at the SIAM International Conference on Data Mining, Newport Beach, CA, April 23, 2005. Carey E. Priebe received the B.S. degree in mathematics from Purdue University in 1984, the M.S. degree in computer science from San Diego State University in 1988, and the Ph.D. degree in information technology (computational statistics) from George Mason University in 1993. From 1985 to 1994 he worked as a mathematician and scientist in the US Navy research and development laboratory system. Since 1994 he has been a professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, Whiting School of Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland. At Johns Hopkins, he holds joint appointments in the Department of Computer Science and the Center for Imaging Science. He is a past President of the Interface Foundation of North America—Computing Science & Statistics, a past Chair of the Section on Statistical Computing of the American Statistical Association, and on the editorial boards of Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, and Computational Statistics. His research interests are in computational statistics, kernel and mixture estimates, statistical pattern recognition, statistical image analysis, and statistical inference for high-dimensional and graph data. He was elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2002. John M. Conroy received a B.S. in Mathematics from Saint Joseph's University in 1980 and a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Maryland in 1986. Since then he has been a research staff member for the IDA Center for Computing Sciences in Bowie, MD. His research interest is applications of numerical linear algebra. He is a member of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and the Association for Computational Linguistics. David J. Marchette received a B.A. in 1980, and an M.A. in mathematics in 1982, from the University of California at San Diego. He received a Ph.D. in Computational Sciences and Informatics in 1996 from George Mason University under the direction of Ed Wegman. From 1985–1994 he worked at the Naval Ocean Systems Center in San Diego doing research on pattern recognition and computational statistics. In 1994 he moved to the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren Virginia where he does research in computational statistics and pattern recognition, primarily applied to image processing, text processing, automatic target recognition and computer security. Dr. Marchette is a Fellow of the American Statistical Society. Youngser Park received the B.E. degree in electrical engineering from Inha University in Korea in 1985, the M.S. degree in computer science from The George Washington University in 1991, and had pursued a doctoral degree there. From 1998 to 2000 he worked at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutes as a senior research engineer. Since 2003 he is working as a research analyst in the Center for Imaging Science at the Johns Hopkins University. His research interests are clustering algorithm, pattern classification, and data mining.     

Shiing-Shen Chern��s Centenary

Shiing-Shen Chern was an editor of our journal Results in Mathematics from 1984 to 2004, the year he passed away at Tianjin. This article honors one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century, in particular remembering his studies at Hamburg University during the years 1934?C1936. This period strongly influenced his mathematical work and was decisive for his later career. We survey the situation of the Department of Mathematics there, Chern??s studies, his visits to Germany in later years, his honours and awards from German institutions, and finally exemplarily his influence on the next generations of Chinese mathematicians studying in Germany.     

Jack van Lint (1932-2004): A survey of his scientific work

When Jack van Lint was appointed as full professor at the Eindhoven University of Technology at the age of 26 he combined a PhD in number theory with a very open scientific mind. It took a sabbatical visit to Bell Laboratories in 1966 to make him understand that a new and fascinating field of applied mathematics was emerging: discrete mathematics. It fascinated and inspired him for the rest of his life. When he passed away on September 28, 2004, he left behind a legacy of 18 books and 177 articles, covering many aspects of coding theory, combinatorics, and finite geometry.van Lint was also a strong international advocate of the role that discrete mathematics ought to play in modern applied mathematics curricula. Quite a few departments sought his advice. Years later, four different universities showed their appreciation by awarding him an honorary degree.This overview is an homage to van Lint's academic achievements and can serve as an introduction to his work for younger generations.     

中美大学数学教育研究之比较

论证了大学数学教育是高等教育的核心,数学教育本质上是一种素质教育,数学的应用遍及自然科学和社会科学.数学是大学理工科各专业知识的基础;探讨了大学数学教育研究的重要性,对中美大学数学教育的研究进行了对比,指出我们在研究大学数学教育方面的不足之处,提出了我们在大学数学教育研究方面的任务和目标.     

Mathematics teachers’ conceptions and constraints for changing teaching practices in Brazilian higher education: an analysis through activity theory

In recent years, changes in the Brazilian economic and social scenario have generated a growing demand for higher education in the country. In response to this new context, the federal government launched in 2007 a programme aiming at expansion of the enrolment to public higher education. In such environment of changes, several proposals have emerged to adapt the Brazilian federal universities to a new reality. Taking this context into account, the focus of our study is on proposals from the Mathematics Department of the Federal University of Minas Gerais. Their aim is to create a new model of teaching practices for the freshman lessons of the Exact Sciences area, which at first were being experimented in special classrooms of students attending their first course on differential and integral calculus. The data were collected from interviews with students and professors from the mathematics department. They were analyzed and systematized using an activity theory approach. We became instigated by a model developed by Engeström in his study on the changes in the Finnish public health system, considering it as a test (testbench) for activity theory in its application to a particular case. Following Engeström's footsteps when developing his research, we arrived at our own model showing the internal tensions in the activity of reformulation of the courses offered by the Department of Mathematics and in the conceptions of teachers that promote – and constraint – the proposals for change.     

Eric John Fyfe Primrose (1920-1998)

Eric Primrose was appointed to a Lectureship in Pure Mathematicsat the University College, Leicester, in 1947 and promoted toa Senior Lectureship in 1954. He came to Leicester direct fromOxford where he had spent the 1946–47 year completinghis degree, which had been interrupted by war service. Ericwas awarded his PhD in 1957 by the University of London. Eric's secondary education was at Chigwell School and in 1939he won an Open Scholarship in Mathematics and went up to StJohn's College, Oxford. He took ‘shortened finals’in 1941 and then entered the RAF as a Technical Officer (Radar),reaching the rank of Flight Lieutenant, having served in variouslocations throughout Europe.     

A Sino-German semi-virtual seminar in mathematics education

In summer 2006 the University of Education in Weingarten, Germany, and East China Normal University, Shanghai, performed a semi-virtual seminar with mathematics students on “Mathematics and Architecture”. The goal was the joint development of teaching materials for German or Chinese school, based on different buildings such as “Nanpu Bridge”, or the “Eiffel Tower”. The purpose of the seminar was to provide a learning environment for students supported by using information and communication technology (ICT) to understand how the hidden mathematics in buildings should be related to school mathematics; to experience the multicultural potential of the international language “Mathematics”; to develop “media competence” while communicating with others and using technologies in mathematics education; and to recognize the differences in teaching mathematics between the two cultures. In this paper we will present our ideas, experiences and results from the seminar.     

“Knowledge gained by experience”: Olaus Henrici—engineer,geometer and maker of mathematical models

The German mathematician Olaus Henrici,¹ who was born in Denmark in 1840, studied engineering and mathematics in Germany before making his career in London. Initially, and for only a short time, he worked in an engineering business. He subsequently took on academic positions, first at University College London and then, from 1884, at the newly formed Central Institution (later Central Technical College) where he established a Laboratory of Mechanics. While at University College he became an active promoter of pure geometry and a producer of models of surfaces. In this paper I explore the geometrical side of Henrici's work, setting it into the context of his career and arguing that his interdisciplinary background was a key factor in his success as a creator of models.     

A Vision of Learning to Teach for the 21st Century

Glenda Lappan received her Ed. D. in mathematics and education from the University of Georgia in 1965 and has since worked at Michigan State University. From 1989–91 she took leave to serve as the program director for Teacher Preparation at the National Science Foundation. From 1997–2001 she is on leave to serve as president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). Her research and development interests are in the connected areas of students' learning of mathematics and mathematics teacher professional growth and change at the middle and secondary levels. She has published over a hundred scholarly papers and numerous books for middle grades students and teachers. She is currently the codirector of the Connected Mathematics Project II, which is funded by the National Science Foundation to revise and continue development of a complete middle school curriculum for teachers and for students. She served as the chair of the middle school writing group for the NCTM Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics (1989), and as Chair of the Commission that developed the NCTM Professional Standards for Teaching Mathematics (1991). She served on the NCTM Board of Directors from 1989 to 1992 and from 1997–2001. She has been a member of many national advisory boards, including the following: Glenn T. Seaborg Center for Teaching and Learning Science and Mathematics, the Ford Foundation/University of Pittsburgh QUASAR Project, the NSF/University of Maryland Teacher Preparation Collaborative, and the NSF/San Diego State University Mathematics for Elementary Teacher Preparation Materials Development Project.     

Leslie Fox

Leslie Fox was born in Yorkshire in 1918, and spent most ofhis professional life in Oxford, as Director of the UniversityComputing Laboratory and as the first Professor of NumericalAnalysis in the University. His mathematical education began at the Wheelwright GrammarSchool in Dewsbury, which produced a number of distinguishedmathematicians and scientists at about the same time as Foxunder the influence of an inspiring Headmaster and teacher (LeslieSadler). Fox went to Oxford in 1936 as a scholar of Christ Church,and he gained a First Class Honours degree in Mathematics. Hecontinued his studies for a DPhil under the direction of ProfessorSir Richard Southwell, with a project in the area of computationaland engineering mathematics which initiated some of the maininterests of his career. His first appointment was at the AdmiraltyComputing Service in 1943; here he learnt the skills of table-makingwhich he later used in a number of publications. In 1945 Fox and several colleagues moved to the new MathematicsDivision of the National Physical Laboratory. It was recognisedat that time that the emerging technology of automatic computationwould lead to requirements for effective mathematical methodswhich exploited the new machinery. The Mathematics Divisionembarked on an extensive programme of research in computationalmethods, in parallel with the construction of the Pilot ACEmachine, which carried out its first computations in 1950. TheDivision remained a major source of ideas and methods in numericalmathematics for many years, with Fox taking a leading role untilhe was appointed to set up the Computing Laboratory in Oxfordin 1957.     

Classroom note A Capstone Course for pre-service secondary mathematics teachers

In the decade since the first of three National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Standards documents was published, there has been an unprecedented amount of attention to, and activity surrounding, issues in mathematics education at all levels. The Department of Mathematics at Baylor University has taken the first of several necessary steps to provide future mathematics teachers with the best possible preparation. The paper reports efforts at Baylor University to involve their secondary mathematics education students in new teaching methods and the use of technology in the teaching of mathematics at the secondary level. A number of examples are given of how pre-service mathematics teachers connect ideas across mathematics courses and develop personal self-confidence and a disposition to seek, evaluate, and use quantitative and spatial information in problem-solving.     

Mathematical Models for Studying the Value of Motivational Leadership in Teams

Mathematical models are presented for studying the value of leadership in a team where the members interact with each other. The models are based on a leader’s role of motivating each team member to perform closer to his/her maximum ability. These models include controllable parameters whose values reflect the amount of task interdependence among the workers as well as the motivational skill and variability in the skill of the leader. Confirming results—such as the fact that the skill level of the leader is a critical factor in the expected performance of the team—establish credibility in the models. Mathematical analysis and computer simulations are used to provide new managerial insights into the value of the leader—such as the fact that the skill of the leader can be more important than controlling the amount of interdependence among the team members and that having a choice of multiple leaders with no particular motivating skill is beneficial to the performance of small teams but not to large teams.Daniel Solow received a B.S. in Mathematics from Carnegie-Mellon, an M.S. in Operations Research from the University of California at Berkeley, and a Ph. D. in Operations Research from Stanford University. He has been a professor at Case Western Reserve University since 1978. His research interests include complex systems, discrete, linear, and nonlinear optimization. He has also developed systematic methods for teaching mathematical proofs, computer programming, and operations research.Sandy Kristin Piderit is an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, and earned her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. She studies the roles of relationships among coworkers on their performance and satisfaction with their work environments, and has published studies in the Academy of Management Review, the Journal of Management Studies, and Management Science.Apostolos Burnetas received a Diploma in Electrical Engineering from National Technical University in Athens, Greece, and an M.B.A. and Ph.D. in Operations Research from Rutgers University. He has been at the Department of Operations at Case Western Reserve University and is currently an Associate Professor at the Department of Mathematics at the University of Athens. His research interests include stochastic models and optimization, complex systems, and applications in queueing systems, supply chain and the interface of operations with finance.Chartchai Leenawong received a B.S. in Mathematics from Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, an M.S. in Computer Science from the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, and a Ph.D. in Operations Research from Case Western Reserve University. His research interests include mathematical modeling of complex systems as applied to business organizations. He has been a professor at King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Bangkok, Thailand since 2002.     

高师数学专业学生实验能力培养的理论研究与实践

数学实验活动是提高学生数学素养,提高学生应用能力和创造能力的有效途径.高师院校学生肩负着未来培养中小学生的数学探究能力和创造能力的重大使命.因此,高师院校数学实验的教学改革研究具有双重的意义.本文通过对高师院校数学实验课程体系改革的理论研究与教学实践,探讨了高师院校数学实验教学的一条新路,提供了适合高师院校学生数学实验能力培养的新教学模式和新途径.