BULLETIN

November/novembre 2014 Number/le numéro 55

WHAT’S INSIDEPresident’s Message [Elaine Landry] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 2ArticlesAnnouncements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3Oughtred Society Meeting [Amy Ackerberg-Hastings] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 5HOMSIGMAA News [Amy Shell-Gellasch] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 6Quotations in Context [Mike Molinsky] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .page 6CSHPM’s 40th Anniversary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 7Book Review: Laplace’s Correspondence [Menolly Lysne] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 82015 Meeting Local Information [Amy Ackerberg-Hastings] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 9MAA Convergence’s 10th Anniversary [Janet Beery] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 11ESU-7 in Copenhagen [Jim Kiernan] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 16CSHPS at Brock [David Orenstein] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 13HPM Americas Section at IL State [Amy Ackerberg-Hastings] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15Joint AMS/MAA Meetings in San Antonio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .page 18Book Review: Count Like an Egyptian [Amy Shell-Gellasch] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 19Changes to the Proceedings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20ReportsAGM of CSHPM/SCHPM [Pat Allaire] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 13Executive Council Meeting CSHPM/SCHPM [Pat Allaire] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 16From the Archives: The First Decade of Membership. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .page 202015 Call for Papers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 21New Members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 22From the Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 23

Canadian Society for Historyand Philosophy of Mathematics

Société canadienne d’histoire etde philosophie des mathématiques

ISSN 0835-5924

ABOUT THE SOCIETY

Founded in 1974, the Canadian Society for the His-tory and Philosophy of Mathematics / Société cana-dienne d’histoire et philosophie des mathématiques(CSHPM/SCHPM) promotes research and teachingin the history and philosophy of mathematics. Offi-cers of the Society are:President: Elaine Landry, UC Davis, Davis, CA95616, USA, emlandry@ucdavis.eduVice-President: Dirk Schlimm, McGill University,Montréal, QC H3A 2T7, CA, dirk.schlimm@mcgill.caSecretary: Patricia Allaire, 14818 60th Ave., Flush-ing, NY 11355, USA, PatAllaire@gmail.comTreasurer: David Bellhouse, University of West-ern Ontario, London, ON N6A 5B7, CA, bellhouse@stats.uwo.caPast President: Glen Van Brummelen, Quest Uni-versity, Squamish, BC V8B 0N8, CA, gvb@questu.ca

Members of Council

Craig Fraser, University of Toronto, Toronto, ONM5S 2J7, CA, craig.fraser@utoronto.caJean-Pierre Marquis, Université de Montréal, Mon-tréal, QC H3C 3J7, CA, jean-pierre.marquis@umontreal.caKaren Hunger Parshall, University of Virginia,Charlottesville, VA 22904, USA, khp3k@eservices.virginia.eduJoel Silverberg, Roger Williams University, Bristol,RI 02809, USA, joel.silverberg@alumni.brown.edu

The Society’s Web Page (www.cshpm.org) is main-tained by Michael Molinsky, University of Maine atFarmington, Farmington, ME 04938, USA, michael.molinsky@maine.edu. The Proceedings of the An-nual Meeting are edited by Maria Zack, Point LomaNazarene University, San Diego, CA 92106, USA,mzack@plnu.edu. The Society’s Archives are man-aged by Michael Molinsky (see above). The posi-tion of CMS Liaison is vacant.New Members are most cordially welcome; please con-tact the Secretary.

From the President

Over the past several years, the CSHPM has beenexpanding its scope and its reach, both with respectto our joint meetings and various collaborations withother associations and societies, and now with ournewly founded public Proceedings. This is not onlyexciting for our membership, coming as we do tothe history and philosophy of mathematics with var-ious interests and perspectives, but it further reflectswell the strength and reputation of the CSHPM. Weshould be proud of these accomplishments, especiallywhen other professional organizations are both dimin-ishing in their membership and in their representationof members’ interests. I believe this is because we havemanaged to find and maintain the right combinationof upholding our mission and of extending ourselvesto those associations and societies with shared goalsand interests.Those who know me know, and those who do not willsoon discover, that one of the things I am most proudof is that I am Canadian. This extends too to mydesire to ensure that the CSHPM maintains the verybest aspects of its collaborations and its Canadian-ness. To me, this means continuing to see and appre-ciate the unity in our differences, all the while build-ing on our strengths and resources in a way that al-lows us to continue to flourish in the same thoughtfuland respectful manner. And, moreover, that we growsteadily in pursuing our purpose of sharing our knowl-edge and seeking to learn from each other; that westrive to maintain our individuality as a Society, butalso aim to expand with this purpose as our commoncause.My goal as President is to continue and strengthenour existing collaborations and to further facilitatethis aim by investigating the establishment of anonline HPM Archive, similar to the PhilSci-Archive(philsci-archive.pitt.edu/) in philosophy of sci-ence and ArXiv (arxiv.org/) in mathematics. Theobjective, then, is to have a public, searchable indexof papers in history and philosophy of mathematics,with the intention of both receiving comments on ourworks in progress and accessing the very latest re-search. Again, my hope is that those associations andsocieties with whom we have already established col-laborations will be part of this exciting venture, andthat we can further extend this to include others. I

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emlandry@ucdavis.edudirk.schlimm@mcgill.cadirk.schlimm@mcgill.caPatAllaire@gmail.combellhouse@stats.uwo.cabellhouse@stats.uwo.cagvb@questu.cacraig.fraser@utoronto.cajean-pierre.marquis@umontreal.cajean-pierre.marquis@umontreal.cakhp3k@eservices.virginia.edukhp3k@eservices.virginia.edujoel.silverberg@alumni.brown.edujoel.silverberg@alumni.brown.edumichael.molinsky@maine.edumichael.molinsky@maine.edumzack@plnu.eduphilsci-archive.pitt.edu/arxiv.org/

invite you all to contact me to share your ideas on thisand to offer much needed advice and assistance!Not only will the HPM Archive allow us to expandthe reach of the CSHPM as well as our own personalresearch networks, but my hope is that it will deepenour intellectual exchanges. As we no doubt have allfelt, as the meetings of societies and associations haveincreased the number of both talks and collaborativemeetings, the time allotted for conference and work-shop talks has dramatically decreased. We are nowlucky if we have 15 minutes to speak; for philosophersand historians, this is often when the fun is just be-ginning! My hope is that the Archive will providea new means for us to share our ideas with greatercomplexity and develop the mission of the CSHPM.As I begin my term as President, I thank you allin advance for your support and assistance, but al-ready I would especially like to thank Amy Ackerberg-Hastings, Patricia Allaire, Tom Archibald, Jean-Pierre Marquis, Michael Molinsky, Dirk Schlimm,Glen Van Brummelen and last, but certainly not least,Maria Zack. It is my honor and a great pleasure toserve you all!Elaine Landry

Announcements

Peace to the memory of Jacqueline (“Jackie”) Stedall,former BSHM Council member, BSHM Bulletin ed-itor, and friend of CSHPM, who passed away onSeptember 27, 2014. A memorial will appear in ourMay 2015 issue. In the meantime, David Orensteindiscussed one of her final publications, The History ofMathematics: A Very Short Introduction, in our May2014 issue. Similarly, Tom Drucker wrote: “I had ex-pected the volume on history of mathematics to givea brief history of the subject of mathematics. Instead,I’d describe it as an introduction to how one does his-tory of mathematics. Since that seems analogous to avolume on mathematics itself, I shouldn’t have beensurprised. Still, it was an interesting choice, and onethat makes it useful in some settings where anotheraccount of how mathematics developed would be su-perfluous.”Taming the Unknown: A History of Algebra from An-tiquity to the Early Twentieth Century, by Victor J.Katz and Karen Hunger Parshall, was published by

Princeton University Press in June 2014.Jeff Oaks was a visiting professor at École des HautesÉtudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris in March 2014.He gave four talks on medieval algebra and arithmeticwhile there. On March 6, he presented “Algorithmsand creative thinking in Arabic and Italian algebra”at the workshop “Pratiques algorithmiques dans lesmathématiques pré-algébriques,” held in Paris March4–7. On June 17, he delivered “Al-Khayyām’s scien-tific revision of algebra” at the Workshop on Historyof Mathematics, held at Tel Aviv University. On June18, he gave “Polynomials and equations in Arabic al-gebra” at the second joint meeting of the AmericanMathematical Society and the Israeli MathematicalUnion, held at Tel Aviv University.Tom Drucker received the 2013 Concern for AdultsReturning to Education Award from the Universityof Wisconsin-Whitewater School of Graduate Stud-ies and Continuing Education Services, now immor-talized in “Equation for Success,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5ZHGcdy5dE.A meeting celebrating Jeremy Gray’s many achieve-ments and to honor his retirement from the Open Uni-versity was held September 11–12 in Milton Keynes.Speakers included: Snezana Lawrence, Umberto Bot-tazzini, Karine Chemla, Leo Corry, Niccolò Guiccia-rdini, Erhard Scholz, Moritz Epple, Jesper Lützen,June Barrow-Green, and Jeremy Gray.Dominic Klyve was one of the recipients of theHenry L. Alder Award for Distinguished Teaching bya Beginning College or University Faculty Member atMathFest 2014.Gary Towsley and Toke Knudsen organized a ses-sion on “History of Mathematics in the Classroom”at the MAA Seaway Section meeting at Buffalo StateUniversity on April 25–26. Speakers included: MarkMcKinzie, Angeliki Kazas-Pontisakos, Toke Knudsen,Bob Rogers, Chuck Rocca, Jeff Johannes, and GaryTowsley. Keith Jones and Toke Knudsen also gave aspecial presentation on “Bhāskara II: A RemarkableMathematician”.Olivier Bruneau, Pierre Couchet, and Scott Walter or-ganized the annual meeting of the Digital HPS Con-sortium in Nancy, France, on September 1–3.BSHM meetings and events this fall included: “FromDürer to Sudoku: 500 Years of Recreational Maths”on September 6 at the British Science Festival in

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5ZHGcdy5dEwww.youtube.com/watch?v=X5ZHGcdy5dE

Birmingham; “Open University Videos on the Historyof Mathematics” on October 11 in Birmingham; “His-tory of Statistics” on October 30 at Gresham College;the launch of the new joint Portuguese/UK philatelicwebsite on November 21 at Oxford; and the ChristmasMeeting and AGM on December 6 in Birmingham.Meetings in 2015 will include a research in progresssession on February 21 in Oxford and “History of Sym-metry” on May 23 at Birkbeck College, along with thejoint meeting with CSHPM.The ARITHMOS reading group met in Danbury, Con-necticut, September 27–28, and studied Begriffschriftby Gottlob Frege. The 50th session will feature earlypapers by Leonhard Euler on number theory and beheld in Schenectady, New York, January 31–February1, 2015. For information, contact Kim Plofker, plofk-erk@union.edu.The 6th International Symposium on Ancient ChineseBooks and Records of Science was held in New YorkCity on October 3–5. See socrates.bmcc.cuny.edu/ISABRST2014/bmcc/conference/index.html.Michel Serfati announces the fall semester programfor the annual seminar on Epistemology and Historyof Mathematical Ideas, held Wednesdays at 2:00 pmat the Institut Henri Poincaré in Paris: Maurice Mar-genstern (Lorraine), “Les automates cellulaires, pointde rencontre entre physique, mathématiques et in-formatique” on October 8; Gabriel Sabbagh (ParisVII), “Bicquilley, mathématicien et économiste” onOctober 15; Michel Serfati (IREM), “Sur la philoso-phie du symbolisme mathématique. L’émergence dela composition, de Descartes à Leibniz. Aspectsmathématiques et épistémologiques” on November12; Patrick Iglesias-Zemmour (LATP/CNRS), “Dif-feology” on November 26; Philippe Seguin (IREM),“Hilbert, la ‘prétendue école combinatoire’ et le for-malisme” on December 10; Michel Serfati (IREM),“L’origine des mathématiques, selon Leibniz” on Jan-uary 21; and Régine Douady (Diderot & IREM), “Évo-lution des connaissance mathématiques des élèves enmilieu scolaire. Libertés et contraintes de l’enseignantet de ses élèves dans leur relation à un certain savoirà enseigner. Une étude de cas” on January 28.The seventh Portuguese-Brazilian Meeting on Historyof Mathematics was held in Óbidos, Portugal, on Oc-tober 15–19. See encontrohistoriamatematicaobidos.com/.The Forum for the History of the Mathematical Sci-

ences (FoHoMS) again will hold a luncheon, sponsoredby the Legacy of R. L. Moore Project, during the2014 History of Science Society Annual Meeting inChicago, Illinois, November 6–9. History and philoso-phy of mathematics on the HSS program includes: theFoHoMS session on “ ‘The Center of Gravity of Math-ematics Has Moved More Definitely Toward Amer-ica’: The Mathematical Sciences in America, 1930–1950”; a session on “Einstein and the Relation be-tween Physics and Mathematics”; a session on “Eu-ler: Mathematical Genius in the Enlightenment” withparticipation by Judy Grabiner, Ron Calinger, RobBradley, and Dominic Klyve; a session on “Mathe-matics and Mechanics” with participation by EdithSylla and Paul Wolfson; a session on “MathematicalLaboratory/Paper Physics: Concepts, Pedagogy, andMethods of Mathematical Physics”; a session on “Ev-idence in Mathematical Understanding”; and a ses-sion on “Number and Narratives: New Approaches tothe History of the Mathematical Sciences” with par-ticipation by Emily Redman, Massimo Mazzotti, andAmir Alexander. Other individual talks of interestinclude: Stephanie Dick, “Looking for Limits: Con-figuring Minds, Mathematics, and Machines in theMid-Twentieth Century”; and Guido Caniglia, “Math-ematics and Natural Observations at the Origins ofSociobiology: The Epistemology of Hamilton’s Workon Tropical Social Wasps (1963–1968)”. Posters onthe history of mathematics include: Kathleen Clark,“Deciphering Mathematical Problems of the ‘ShoeboxCollection’ of the Paul A.M. Dirac Papers at FloridaState University”.The 3rd Annual Fields Medal Symposium will beheld in Toronto on November 16–20 and feature thetheme, “The Many Facets of Entropy: Kinetic Theory,Optimal Transport, Geometry”, in honor of CédricVillani. See www.fields.utoronto.ca/programs/scientific/fieldsmedalsym/index.html. DavidOrenstein reported on the 2nd Symposium in ourNovember 2013 issue.The 25th Novembertagung was held in Nancy, France,November 19–21. See novembertagung.org/.A research workshop on “Mathematical Readers in theEarly Modern World” will be held December 18–19at All Souls College, Oxford. Speakers include: KenClements, Nerida Ellerton, Kathryn James, YeldaNasifoglu, and Benjamin Wardhaugh.CERME 9 (Congress of European Research in Math-

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socrates.bmcc.cuny.edu/ISABRST2014/bmcc/conference/index.htmlsocrates.bmcc.cuny.edu/ISABRST2014/bmcc/conference/index.htmlencontrohistoriamatematicaobidos.com/encontrohistoriamatematicaobidos.com/www.fields.utoronto.ca/programs/scientific/fieldsmedalsym/index.htmlwww.fields.utoronto.ca/programs/scientific/fieldsmedalsym/index.htmlnovembertagung.org/

ematics Education) will be held in Prague, Czech Re-public, February 4–8, 2015, and include a ThematicWorking Group on “History in Mathematics Educa-tion”, led by Uffe Jankvist, Renaud Chorlay, KathyClark, Snezana Lawrence, and Jan van Maanen. Seewww.cerme9.org/about-cerme-9/.The 2015 symposium of the Scientific InstrumentCommission has been tentatively scheduled for Septem-ber 7–11 in Turin, Italy.ICME-13 (International Congress on MathematicalEducation) will be held in Hamburg, Germany, July24–31, 2016. The team for the Topic Study Groupon “History of the Teaching and Learning of Mathe-matics” includes Fulvia Furinghetti, Alexander Karp,Henrike Allmendinger, Harm Jan Smid, and JohanPrytz; the team for the “Role of History of Mathemat-ics in Mathematics Education” TSG includes CostasTzanakis, Xiaoqin Wang, Kathleen Clark, Tinne HoffKjeldsen, and Sebastian Schorcht. See icme13.org/home.From 2015, the Hakluyt Society, which studies his-torical voyages and travel, will award an annual es-say prize (or more than one, if the judges so decide)of up to a total of £750. The competition is opento postdoctoral scholars of not more than two years’standing on December 31, 2014, and to undergraduateand graduate students registered as such on that date.Winners will be invited to publish their essays in theonline Journal of the Hakluyt Society if they wish todo so, attend the annual meeting, and receive a one-year membership. Submissions were due November 1.See www.hakluyt.com.Thomas Wolf of Brock University has added a historyquestion to the online Caribou Mathematics Compe-tition that he operates for grades 3–12. Students mayparticipate in one or more of the contests; those whoenter at least five of the seven total events may con-tend for the “Caribou Cup”. See cariboutests.com/.The University of Pittsburgh Press in a partnershipsupported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation inan ongoing initiative to support innovative research,is seeking new books to significantly expand its list inhistory and philosophy of science and invites proposalsfrom experienced and new authors that explore scien-tific thought and practice in any culture during anyera. See www.upress.pitt.edu/forAuthors.aspx.Springer announces a new book series, “European

Studies in Philosophy of Science”, edited by Den-nis Dieks, Maria Carla Galavotti, and Wenceslao J.Gonzalez. The series is a joint effort of the Euro-pean Philosophy of Science Association and Philoso-phy of Science in a European Perspective: ESF Net-working Programme. Suggestions of dissertations andmanuscripts are welcome.The IEEE History Center has relocated from Rut-gers University to Stevens Institute of Technology inHoboken, New Jersey.The Antiquarian Horological Society, for those inter-ested in the story of time and its material culture,has a new president, Lisa Jardine, and a new website,www.ahsoc.org. The website includes digitized ver-sions of the entire 60-year run of Antiquarian Horol-ogy.The 18th-century Cabinet of Physics of the ScienceMuseum at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, hasbeen listed as a European Historic Site of Physics bythe European Physical Society.The peer-reviewed open access journal, InternationalJournal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Ac-tivities is preparing a special issue on the history ofmathematics.2014 newsletters for the International History andPhilosophy of Science Teaching Group are availableat ihpst.net/newsletters/.HPM Newsletters are found at www.clab.edc.uoc.gr/hpm/NewsLetters.htm. For recent announce-ments, see grouphpm.wordpress.com/.Cambridge Archive Editions has begun digitizing itscomplete collection. See www.archiveeditions.co.uk/.

Oughtred Society Meeting

My appointment cataloging mathematical instru-ments for digitization at the Smithsonian ended inDecember 2013. I decided to spend some of the timeopened up by the end of my appointment learningabout people who care about instruments, so I headedto Las Vegas on March 1 for the winter meeting ofthe Oughtred Society, a group of slide rule collectorsin North America.Nearly 40 people from 13 states and three countriesgathered in a simple but pleasant meeting room at

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www.cerme9.org/about-cerme-9/icme13.org/homeicme13.org/homewww.hakluyt.comcariboutests.com/www.upress.pitt.edu/forAuthors.aspxwww.ahsoc.orgihpst.net/newsletters/www.clab.edc.uoc.gr/hpm/NewsLetters.htmwww.clab.edc.uoc.gr/hpm/NewsLetters.htmgrouphpm.wordpress.com/www.archiveeditions.co.uk/www.archiveeditions.co.uk/

the National Atomic Testing Museum. After intro-ductions, we heard four presentations of varying qual-ity on the history of logarithms, the operation of sliderules, slide rules for electronics, and previous and up-coming International Meetings of Collectors of Histor-ical Calculating Instruments.For most attendees, the highlight of the meeting cameafter lunch, with the slide rule auction. About a dozencollectors brought full tables of rules to display andsell. The rules for the auction were a little complex,but I caught on well enough to bring home an inex-pensive Pickett N600-ES, “the slide rule that went tothe moon.” I also got a free Keuffel & Esser case toreplace the one holding my mother-in-law’s slide rulethat was chewed up by Sparky the Firefighter Dog,and I bought a stack of 1920s drafting magazines thatmay show up in a future Mathematical Ephemera col-umn even though Sparky ate one of those when I gothome. Either Sparky or his person definitely needsobedience training. Anyway, all attendees receivedgifts of dry roasted macadamia nuts from the Hawai-ian member of the society and never-used rules de-signed in 1951 for the US Air Force to read aerial re-connaissance photos from Walter and Susan Shawlee,who operate the Slide Rule Universe website. A groupdinner followed the auction, and several gathered thenext day to tour Boulder Dam.For me, the best part of the meeting was having enjoy-able conversations with delightful people, particularlyDick and Sandy Rose, who did most of the meetingorganization from their home in Ohio; Bob De Ce-saris, the society’s president; Ed Chamberlain, whoseplanned talk at Goddard Space Center the followingMonday was snowed out in the never-ending winter of2014; Kate Matthews, who arranged for video record-ing of the meeting; and Clark McCoy, who amongother things put together the extensive K&E websitethat I found essential for cataloging the Smithsonian’sslide rules. Like CSHPM, the group is graying andeager to share its passions with a younger generation.The group met again on June 21 at the ComputerHistory Museum in California and will host an in-ternational meeting in California in fall 2015. Seewww.oughtred.org.Amy Ackerberg-Hastings

HOM SIGMAA News

This year marks the final year the HOM SIGMAAwas able to use up its accumulated funds. The MAAdecided a few years back that SIGMAAs would nolonger be allowed to carry excess funds from year toyear. And since we had accrued a significant amount,I started spending money! (I love my job of programchair!) To date the HOM SIGMAA has funded in partor in full seven projects, many of which are in cooper-ation with Carol Mead at the American Archives forMathematics. The last two of those projects are fin-ished or wrapping up, and to celebrate those projects,I have asked both of those people to be our guestspeakers for the HOM annual meeting at the JMM inSan Antonio (Saturday evening). We will start off theevening with a presentation from Kathy Clark of FSUon the Dirac Shoebox papers. We will have our usualdrinks, snacks and hijinks, then end the evening withour featured speaker, Carl Pomerance of Dartmouth,who will speak on his extensive correspondence withPaul Erdos.There will also be two HOM sponsored contributedpaper sessions at the meetings: Ethnomathematics:A Tribute to Marcia Ascher and Original Sources andArchives in the Classroom.Returning to funding, Frank Swetz is finishing off thelast year of his HOM grant, working hard to bringspectacular images to Convergence, www.maa.org-/publications/periodicals/convergence/mathematical-treasures. If you have not checked out the Mathemat-ical Treasures site, you are in for a treat. Finally,Walter Meyer has wrapped up work on the Cajori IIproject. We are looking for a permanent home for thiswonderful source on the history of math education inthe US. Keep an eye out for it.Amy Shell-Gellasch

Quotations in Context

“A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what

he is and whose denominator is what he

thinks of himself. The larger the denominator

the smaller the fraction.”

The quotation above has appeared in many publica-tions over the last decade and is always attributed toRussian author Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (morewidely known as Leo Tolstoy). The few citations pro-

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vided for the quotation can all be traced back to abook published by Howard W. Eves in 1988, Returnto Mathematical Circles (where the quotation appearsas “218�"). Unfortunately, Eves provides no informa-tion on the original source of the quotation, and Ihave found no publication before 1988 that containsthe same wording that Eves provides.One possible source which Eves may have used is a let-ter Tolstoy wrote a mere fifteen days before his death.Tolstoy was formally excommunicated from the Rus-sian Orthodox Church in 1901, but the Church did notcompletely abandon him; in particular, Father Dim-itri Troitsky continued to visit Tolstoy even after hisexcommunication in an effort to convince him to re-pent and return. When Tolstoy’s health began to failin October 1910, Troitsky wrote to Tolstoy urging himto seek the support and guidance of the Church beforeit was too late. While Tolstoy politely but firmly re-fused this plea, their conversation continued througha few more letters. In the first paragraph of a briefreply written on the fifth of November, Tolstoy laysout a comparison of a man to a fraction, in a mannernot identical but still clearly related to the comparisonthat was attributed to him by Eves.The English translation of the paragraph below isfrom the article “The Last Days of Leo Tolstoy" byAlexander Kaun, published on pages 299–306 of theAtlantic Monthly in March 1922:

I have received your letter, Dimitri Yego-rovich, and thank you for it. I perfectly agreewith you that humility is the greatest and mostneedful virtue. As I always say, man is like afraction, in which the denominator indicateshis opinion of himself. It is best for this de-nominator to be zero (complete humility), andit is terrible when it is augmented to infinity.In the first case, man has a true significance,whatever the denominator; but in the secondcase—none.

While trying to track down the source of the Tolstoyquotation, I ran across an interesting earlier compar-ison between humans and fractions by the politicalphilosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his work Émile,ou De l’éducation, published in 1762. While Tolstoypromoted the importance of humility, Rousseau in-stead used a fraction metaphor to illustrate the com-peting goals of society and the individual. The En-

glish translation below is from Barbara Foxley, andappears on the Project Gutenberg website:

The natural man lives for himself; he is theunit, the whole, dependent only on himself andon his like. The citizen is but the numerator ofa fraction, whose value depends on its denom-inator; his value depends upon the whole, thatis, on the community. Good social institutionsare those best fitted to make a man unnatural,to exchange his independence for dependence,to merge the unit in the group, so that he nolonger regards himself as one, but as a part ofthe whole, and is only conscious of the commonlife.

Mike Molinsky

CSHPM’s 40th Anniversary

As we mentioned in the May 2014 issue, 2014 marksthe 40th anniversary of CSHPM’s first official meet-ing. Archivist Mike Molinsky has shared several itemsrelated to the founding of the Society, including a let-ter circulated in 1973 announcing the plans to estab-lish CSHPM, an article on the beginning of the So-ciety from the first issue of the newsletter that pre-ceded the Bulletin, and, in this issue, an analysis ofearly membership data. He has also compiled lists ofAGM Special Sessions (November 2011) and chartermembers (May 2010).The Archives section of our website provides othermaterials of historical interest. Perhaps most rel-evant in this milestone year is a substantial ar-ticle on “The Formation of the Canadian Societyfor History and Philosophy of Mathematics,” byCharles V. Jones, whose many titles in the Societyincluded “temporary organizational chairman” whenCSHPM was founded. The piece was appended tothe Fall 1985 Newsletter, www.cshpm.org/archives/bulletins/1985Fall.pdf. If you get to page 7, youwill learn why there is no "the" in our name. Page 10alludes to the longstanding presence of Americans ina Canadian society.President Len Berggren gave a tribute to Ken Mayin the Spring 1979 issue, www.cshpm.org/archives/bulletins/Spring1979.pdf. Skimming through theissues from the 1970s and 1980s, it is impressive to

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www.cshpm.org/archives/bulletins/1985Fall.pdfwww.cshpm.org/archives/bulletins/1985Fall.pdfwww.cshpm.org/archives/bulletins/Spring1979.pdfwww.cshpm.org/archives/bulletins/Spring1979.pdf

note how many names continue to be active partici-pants. The Content Editor is rather disconcerted torealize that she joined the Society shortly after its20th anniversary. Alas, that anniversary fell within agap of publication for the Bulletin.

Book Review: Laplace’s Correspon-dence

Correspondence de Pierre Simon Laplace (1749-1827),edited and annotated by Roger Hahn, 2 vol., Turn-hout, Belgium: Brepols, 2013, xiv + 1416 pp.e120,00. ISBN 987-2-503-54129-7.This book truly represents the life’s work of two greatscholars: the editor, Roger Hahn, and the subject,Pierre Simon Laplace (1749–1827). Roger Hahn’searly and sudden death in 2011 meant that he neversaw his completed work, but thankfully his work wascontinued and finished by the International Academyof the History of Science.Prior to his death, Roger Hahn had devoted 50 yearsof his life to the study of Laplace’s life and works.This includes the definitive biography (Hahn, 2005),numerous journal articles, and an early listing ofLaplace’s correspondence (Hahn, 1982), to name afew. In comparing (Hahn, 1982) and the volumes un-der review, it is clear that Hahn was able to greatlyincrease the extent of known correspondence duringthe 30 years between publications. As noted by EllenHahn in her Foreword to this book, Hahn devotedmuch of his European travels to searching for moreexamples of Laplace’s correspondence (Hahn, 2013,p. vii). A fire in the early 20th century, which de-stroyed much of Laplace’s library, had made researchinto the great mathematician difficult before Hahn lo-cated many previously lost or forgotten works.These volumes provide a different insight into Laplacethan has previously been possible. The reader isable to learn about Laplace from the man himself.Hahn has included not only Laplace’s correspondence,but also documents and letters that give a fullerunderstanding of Laplace’s everyday life. ThroughLaplace’s letters we can also see the evolution ofLaplace as a person. The first letter is from Jeanle Rond d’Alembert (1717–1783), telling Laplace ofhis appointment as professor at the École Militairein Paris. The reader is next given an introduction

to the young academic trying to introduce himselfto the academic community. Laplace sent letters toJoseph-Louis Lagrange (1736–1813), Nicolas de Con-dorcet (1743–1794) and Leonhard Euler (1707–1783).Laplace’s correspondence with Lagrange became quiteprolific, with the two men exchanging letters relativelyfrequently until Lagrange moved to Paris in 1787. Inmany of these early letters, the purpose is primar-ily to exchange scientific findings. There is usuallya mention of thanks for sending a recent paper, andthe content is generally discussing points of confusionor contention within the academic works that havebeen exchanged. These letters give the reader insightinto both the politics of academic community and theindividual papers that were under discussion.After the death of Étienne Bézout (1730–1783),Laplace was appointed examiner for artillery students.This appointment continued into the French Revolu-tion. During his time at this post, Laplace sent reg-ular correspondence with the results of the examina-tions. Laplace included who passed and should beappointed officer, who should be allowed to be a stu-dent, those who did not pass for the first or secondattempt, and those who did not show up. Throughthis correspondence, we can see the names of individ-uals who would later have a great impact on France,including Napoleon Bonaparte who passed his examin 1785 (Hahn, 2013, p. 198).The vast majority of the correspondence in the vol-umes under review was in the French language. Onerare exception was Charles Blagden (1748–1820).While Blagden begins writing in French, he quicklystates that he can express himself better in Englishand the remainder of his letters are written in English.Laplace’s letters to Blagden are entirely in French. Inone letter, Blagden comments on Laplace’s translationof an English paper and gives Laplace some sugges-tions as to the nuances in the original text.Laplace kept his letters mostly on the topic of sci-ence. While Jean-André Deluc (1727–1817) informedLaplace of his recent marriage in a letter to Laplace(Hahn, 2013, p. 185), in the letters that we have athand, there is no evidence that Laplace mentions hisown marriage or the birth of his children. He did latersay, in a letter to Deluc, that he would like to visitEngland but having a wife and two children makes thisimpossible (the timing being during the Terror mightalso be a reason for being unable to travel to England)

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(Hahn, 2013, p. 379). Hahn includes items such asLaplace’s marriage certificate and documents relatedto the birth of his children, both of which show thetimeline of Laplace’s personal life that is sometimesmissing in his scientific correspondence.Laplace made little mention of the revolution in hisletters, though he does mention in letters to Barn-aba Oriani (1752–1832) in Milan and Deluc in Eng-land that things have become difficult. To Orianihe writes, “Vous êtes bien heureux d’habiter un paystranquille où vous pouvez vous occuper sans distrac-tion de l’étude des sciences. Ici les affaires publiquestournent vers elles tous les esprit, et d’ici à quelquetemps au moins, les sciences souffriront de cette diver-sion” (You are very lucky to live in a peaceful coun-try where you can study science without distraction.Here, public affairs have caught the hearts and soulsof everyone, and sooner or later, science will sufferfrom this distraction.) (Hahn, 2013, p. 315).Through Laplace’s correspondence, we can also seethe impact of the revolution in the change to refer-ring to colleagues as “citoyen” and the change to us-ing the new dating system. Hahn also includes doc-uments such as passports, receipts and certificates ofresidence.Around 1800, Laplace began to be addressed as“Citoyen Sénateur” or as “Sénateur.” At this timethe reader sees letters written in a more official tone.In addition to letters detailing official appointmentsof instructors to central schools and correspondencebetween Laplace and Napoleon (including a requestby Napoleon for Laplace to find comediens for hisjourney to Egypt, preferably ones who could dance(Hahn, 2013, p. 562)), the reader is shown lettersfrom Mme. Laplace inviting different individuals todinners. The volumes under review also contain let-ters between Mme Laplace and Laplace. These let-ters provide more information about their relationshipthan is generally available to a researcher. During therevolution and into Laplace’s career as a Senator andpublic figure, Laplace maintained his scientific corre-spondence. While previous letters dealt with a rangeof topics, often at the same time, these later lettersconvey a stronger emphasis on celestial mechanics.Overall, the two volumes contained in the work underreview represent an insight into Laplace which wasnot previously possible. The scholarly world has beengiven a tremendous gift in this final work painstak-

ingly compiled by Roger Hahn.ReferencesHahn, R. (1982). Calendar of the Correspondence of

Pierre Simon Laplace. Berkeley, CA: Universityof California.

Hahn, R. (2005). Pierre Simon Laplace, 1749-1827:A determined scientist. Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press.

Hahn, R. (Ed.). (2013). Correspondence de PierreSimon Laplace (1749–1827). Turnhout: Brepol.

Menolly Lysne

2015 Meeting Local Information

As you can see in the Call for Papers and meetingminutes, next year’s joint meeting of CSHPM, BSHM,HOMSIGMAA, and POMSIGMAA will be packedwith paper presentations. (Get your own abstract inearly!) The MAA is also planning a very full scheduleof pageants, cultural events, lectures by big names,conversations with past MAA presidents, giveaways,and historical videos and exhibits. Historical mate-rials can already be found in the Centennial areas ofwww.maa.org. Offsite, Peggy Kidwell is putting to-gether a display case on American mathematics edu-cation ca 1915 at the National Museum of AmericanHistory.Registration and lodging (the Marriott WardmanPark is the conference hotel) will be expensive, butI hope as many of you as possible will make the nec-essary sacrifices to attend and that we can induce sev-eral of our colleagues and friends from BSHM to ven-ture across the Atlantic. If you are willing to commutea bit, there are plenty of moderately-priced hotels;feel free to email me for advice about places you areconsidering. Washington, DC, is a place where manypeople move to work and stay to live, so here is some“insider” information to help you maximize your visitand possibly extend your stay to include sightseeing.First, the meeting is in August, which means thatthose of you familiar with surprisingly snowy JMMsin DC and Baltimore are in for something different.Our legendary humidity is real, and the outdoors feelslike a sauna with temperatures typically between 80and 100 �F. However, everywhere in the region isair-conditioned, and the early mornings can be quitepleasant. The National Zoo grounds, a couple of

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www.maa.org

blocks from the Wardman, open at 6:00 am, so localsgo to exercise and catch a glimpse of the baby panda,who will be nearly two when you arrive. Be awarethat the grounds are a continuous downhill from Con-necticut Avenue, so save enough energy for the uphillreturn trip.If you fly into National Airport—locals know therealready was a Ronald Reagan Building and Interna-tional Trade Center downtown (which, by the way,has an excellent food court) and don’t use the newername for the airport—you will be able to use theMetro subway system throughout your visit. A tripplanner, information about the extensive bus services,and a primer on the complicated fare system (just geta SmarTrip card) are found at www.wmata.org. Theunwritten rule is that we walk left, stand right onthe many escalators in the Metro system. Dulles andBWI are not that far away, but they require use ofa rental car, Super Shuttle, or the Washington Flyertaxi service. DC cabs are now metered (rather thanzoned) and are supposed to take credit cards, so ridesshould be straightforward. I personally prefer Metroand walking. It is about 15 minutes by Metro fromthe Wardman to the National Mall, which is the focalpoint for museums and monuments.One good thing about August is that many locals goon vacation and the number of tourist groups startsto decrease as children head back to school, so it isour best traffic month of the year. If you are inter-ested in iconic tourist destinations, particularly theWhite House, U.S. Capitol, and Washington Monu-ment, start making arrangements far in advance. Thecombination of popularity and security considerationshas made visiting these places complicated. Smithso-nian museums, the National Archives, and the Libraryof Congress can be visited on a walk-up basis butdo have security screenings. And, there are severalprominent museums with entry fees that seem high tothose of us spoiled by the many DC sites offering freeadmission, such as the Newseum, the Spy Museum,and National Museum of Crime and Punishment.Many of the places I like to visit are well-knownenough to be covered by sites such as washington.org and www.culturaltourismdc.org (my favoritetourism website) but are generally not that crowded:DC’s memorial to World War I, the Folger Shake-speare Library, the African Art Museum and Sack-ler/Freer, National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden,

the U.S. Naval Observatory tour (another hard-to-getticket but so worth it), the National Cathedral, andthe National Arboretum (not Metro-accessible). DChistory and African-American history are intertwined,so a trip to the U Street Corridor is a must. Ben’sChili Bowl only takes cash, but if you go all the wayto the back, there is a seating area with wait staff.The Washingtonia collections at the Martin LutherKing and Georgetown Libraries are priceless. Metro’sYellow Line crosses over the Potomac (the Blue andOrange lines run underneath the river) and offers agood view of the monuments between the L’Enfantand Pentagon stations, although the view is somewhatobscured in August by leafy trees.We have several celebrity chefs, including Jose An-dres (small plates and tapas), Michel Richard (Cen-tral), and Bryan Voltaggio (further afield in Frederick,MD). The head of the Library of Congress’s folklifecollections, who lives in the Woodley Park neighbor-hood near the Wardman, recommends Afghan Grill(kabobs and more), Lebanese Taverna (a local chainwith Middle Eastern food), District Kitchen (its takeon comfort food made an immediate sensation), PetitsPlats (French and American), Umi (Japanese), CityHeights (for a splurge), and Chipotle (the nationalchain that started the quick serve and sustainablesuppliers trends, a location is next door to the Ward-man). She urges us to avoid the Woodley Cafe. TheDC area has several local chains that suit my Mid-western, parent-of-a-six-year-old tastes: Hard TimesCafe (chili), Guapo’s (Tex-Mex), Bread and Choco-late (the name is self-explanatory), Five Guys (burg-ers), and Cake Love (cupcakes). We have a plethoraof farmers’ markets.Although some theaters go dark in August, the Na-tional and other locales book a variety of productionsyear-round. The Kennedy Center has a free concertevery day at 6:00 pm. Olney Theatre in the Marylandsuburbs is our regional theater, and Wolf Trap in theVirginia suburbs is our outdoor venue (our Ravinia,for Chicagoans). For current movies in a classic set-ting, the Uptown Theater is the place to go. Forarthouse films, as a suburbanite I head to BethesdaRow or the AFI in Silver Spring (both Metro acces-sible). The Washington Nationals (baseball), Wash-ington Mystics (women’s basketball), and DC United(soccer) are all in season in August. My aforemen-tioned six-year-old would be happy to help you get

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www.wmata.orgwashington.orgwashington.orgwww.culturaltourismdc.org

tickets and to keep you company at the game!Amy Ackerberg-Hastings

MAA Convergence’s 10th Anniver-sary

Founded in 2004 by well-known mathematics histo-rians and educators, Victor Katz and Frank Swetz,Convergence is both an online journal on mathematicshistory and its use in teaching and an ever-expandingcollection of online resources to help its readers teachmathematics using its history.Convergence is celebrating ten years of publication bycontinuing to bring mathematics professors and teach-ers interesting articles and features on the history ofgrades 8–16 mathematics as well as exciting ideas andresources for sharing this history with students.Articles published in 2014 include:

• “Proofs Without Words and Beyond” explores his-tory and philosophy of visual proofs, along withdynamic, interactive “proofs without words 2.0.”

• “David Hilbert’s Radio Address” features an au-dio recording, transcription, and translation intoEnglish of Hilbert’s 4-minute radio version of hislonger 1930 address with its famous finale, “Wirmüssen wissen; wir werden wissen.”

• “Cubes, Conic Sections, and Crockett Johnson”shows how this author and illustrator painted ananswer to his own question, “What do the straight-edge lines and compass arcs do when two parabolasand a hyperbola double a cube, just stand watch-ing?”

• “An Investigation of Subtraction Algorithms fromthe 18th and 19th Centuries” is based on a studyof handwritten cyphering books as well as printedarithmetic texts.

We’re honoring the best of our ten-year publicationhistory by presenting new, more interactive versionsof some of our favorite articles:

• “Van Schooten’s Ruler Constructions,” by Ed San-difer, was among the articles that appeared in thefirst issue of MAA Convergence in April 2004.

• “Historical Activities for the Calculus Classroom”(2007), by Gabriela Sanchis, consists of three mod-ules that present curve-sketching, tangent lines,and optimization in the context of historical aimsand problems, with the aid of 24 interactive ap-plets and 10 animations.

• “When Nine Points Are Worth But Eight: Euler’sResolution of Cramer’s Paradox” (2011), by RobBradley and Lee Stemkoski, features a translationof a long lost letter from Euler to Cramer, alongwith an interactive presentation of Euler’s “elegantexample” resolving the paradox.

See all of these articles and more at MAA Conver-gence: www.maa.org/publications/periodicals/conver-gence. CSHPM members are also invited to submitarticles for publication.Janet Beery

ESU-7 in Copenhagen

Since 1993 HPM has organized a meeting called theEuropean Summer University approximately everyfour years in various locations on the European con-tinent. The audience has been an interesting mix ofresearchers, practitioners, and students of the historyof mathematics. I have been fortunate to attend six ofthese meetings. This year’s meeting took place July16–18 at the Emdrup campus of Aarhus University,just a short ride from downtown Copenhagen.Each day began with a plenary lecture based on oneof the seven themes of the conference. These themeswere:

1. Tools of history and epistemology, theoreticaland/or conceptual frameworks for integrating his-tory in mathematics education;

2. Classroom experiments and teaching materials,considered from either the cognitive or/and affec-tive points of view; surveys of curricula and text-books;

3. Original sources in the classroom, and their edu-cational effects;

4. History and epistemology as tools for an interdis-ciplinary approach in the teaching and learning ofmathematics and the sciences;

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5. Culture and mathematics;

6. Topics in the history of mathematics education;

7. History of mathematics in the Nordic countries.

See grouphpm.wordpress.com/2013/09/17/7th-eu-ropean-summer-university-on-the-history-and-epistemology-in-mathematics-education/ as wellas conferences.au.dk/ESU-7/.Mornings continued with either two-hour parallelworkshops or panel discussions. Afternoons were filledwith three-hour parallel workshops, followed by a se-ries of short oral and poster presentations. Aftera lively panel discussion on Wednesday, the groupadjourned to Nyhaven downtown for a boat tour ofCopenhagen harbor. This was followed by a walk-ing tour of the Christiania community led by a localresident. Later that evening the group enjoyed a won-derful conference dinner at a nice local restaurant.This year’s meeting was organized by Uffe ThomasJankvist, Tinne Hoffe Kjeldsen, and Evelyn Barbin.There were about 140 participants from a wide rangeof countries. It is always good to see old friends atthese meetings. I was particularly happy to see FrankSwetz. He was a bit of a mentor to me in my early daysin the history of mathematics. I am looking forward tothe next meeting, ESU-8. While the date and locationis not yet firm, I understand that there is great interestin having it on the isle of Crete.Jim Kiernan

CSHPS at Brock

Our CSHPM 2014 meeting at Brock University, on thebrow of the Niagara Escarpment in St. Catherines,Ontario, ran two and a half days, from Sunday, May25, to Tuesday, May 27. We overlapped with CSHPS,which ran from Saturday, May 24, to Monday, May 26,primarily in the Lowenberger Residence on the westside of campus. I attended CSHPS for the first dayand a half before trekking east to the Earp FireplaceLounge. The individual papers were given in threeparallel sessions throughout the meeting.I certainly had a busy Saturday morning. At breakfastin the residence cafeteria, I was smart enough to checkthe schedule and, to my surprise, I discovered that thefirst sessions started at 8:45 am and not at 9:00 am.

This was a good thing, since I was chairing one ofthem.It was an all University of Toronto session. I’m analumnus and frequent visitor, especially to the bi-weekly Wednesday afternoon colloquia at the Insti-tute for the History and Philosophy of Science andTechnology. The four presenters (Isaac Record, EricWeidenhammer, Dan Southwick, and Gabby Resch)were all UofT graduate students. Their exciting, rich,and insightful presentations augur well for the futureof the field.Isaac had organised the session, “Remaking the Past:History in 3D”, and all four papers involved 3D scan-ning and printing. For instance, Isaac’s paper was anoverview of the possibilities of using 3D methods inscience studies. He gave a realistic look at what cur-rent technologies can actually do to “transform accessto artifacts”.After the coffee break, I was up, in the same room,with my own paper (electronic copy available on re-quest to david.orenstein@utoronto.ca), “The NiagaraExcursions of Early International Canadian ScientificCongresses”, as part of the “Geography and Imperial-ism” session that Isaac chaired. Also presenting wasMarie Lemonnier (UQAM), “Réseaux de contacts etmécanismes d’appropriation des curiosités d’histoirenaturelle” (networks and means of acquiring naturalhistory curiosities). Marie’s paper was one of only twotalks offered in French.The other was by Elise Aurières, who came over fromthe Université de Paris I-Panthéon-Sorbonne. I re-gretfully had to miss her talk, “Le programme deGeorge Sarton pour l’histoire des sciences” (GeorgeSarton’s programme for history of science), eventhough it would tie into the paper I was to deliverto CSHPM.Instead, I was at the “Technologies” session that af-ternoon, especially for the history of mathematicspresentation by Theresa Thornton (SUNY Buffalo),“Blank Forms and Interchangeable Parts: Mathemat-ical Values and the Creation of Imperial Bureaucra-cies in the Early American Republic”, focusing on thework of Nathaniel Bowditch and George Bomford.This session was followed by a plenary session inthe vast lecture hall, Room 242 Thistle: “AuthorMeets Critics: Lee Smolin’s Time Reborn: Fromthe Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe”.

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Three philosophers of science—Richard Arthur (Mc-Master), Kathleen Okruhlik (Western Ontario), andDenis Walsh (Toronto)—looked at Smolin’s philoso-phy of science as it came out of his work in quantumgravity and cosmology. Gord McOuat (King’s Col-lege, Halifax) organised the session.Apart from the ample breakfast buffet provided atthe Lowenberger Residence cafeteria, I seemed to havemost of my lunches and suppers at the grad studentpub, Alfie’s Place, with its lovely mountain brow lo-cation, including a deck that served quite good foodand offered an excellent selection of fine local wineand beer.First up on Sunday was “Microcomputers in Academia:This Time It’s Personal”, organised by Allan Olley(Toronto). This session started with Zbigniew Stach-nial (York) looking at “The MCM/70 in Research andEducation”, “the earliest microprocessor-based com-puter designed by a Canadian company”. Zbigniewpresented a compelling story based on the York Uni-versity Computer Museum’s extensive collection of re-lated artifacts and documents. I noted with nostalgicamazement the use of an APL keyboard, a languageso powerful that not even the original programmercould understand how a programme worked.Scott Campbell’s (Waterloo) “Micro-What? Com-puter Scientists Constructing Microcomputers at theUniversity of Waterloo” looked at when Canada’sleading computer science department decided to buildtheir own microcomputer “to cheaply expand thereach of the existing centralized mainframe”. Allan fo-cused on the Astronomical Computing department ofthe popular American astronomy magazine, Sky andTelescope. The column facilitated mutual support be-tween amateur astronomers exploring the capacity ofthe newly available and increasingly more powerfulpersonal computers to aid their observing and calcu-lating efforts.My late morning session, featuring our new CSHPMPresident Elaine Landry (California-Davis), was “Re-alism”. Elaine spoke on “Structural Realism and Cate-gory Mistakes”, comparing set-theoretic and category-theoretic “account[s] for the structure of the world”.She was joined by Alex Manafu (Sorbonne), “On the(im)possibility of a unified science of multiply real-ized kinds”, and Bryson Brown (Lethbridge), “Lawsof nature: the role of predicates in systematization”.This was the only CSHPS Philosophy session that I

attended, but it was very understandable and encour-agingly provocative. I even got to ask a few goodquestions. Lunch was served at the CSHPS AGM.Most noteworthy were the announcements of furtherannual CSHPS venues. Next year CSHPS will meetwith CFHSS at the University of Ottawa from May30 to June 5. In 2016 there will be two meetings.One will be at CFHSS in Calgary (May 28–June 3),mostly for the philosophers of science. Why? Be-cause CSHPS will also be meeting jointly with the(American) History of Science Society (HSS) and theBritish Society for the History of Science (BSHS) inEdmonton that year. After lunch, I transitioned tothe CSHPM meeting.David Orenstein

AGM of CSHPM/SCHPM

The Annual General Meeting of the Canadian Societyfor History and Philosophy of Mathematics took placeat Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, onMay 26, 2014. The meeting was called to order at12:20 pm by Glen Van Brummelen, President, with35 members in attendance.Agenda for the General Meeting1. Approval of agenda2. Approval of minutes of 2013 AGM3. Treasurer’s report4. Secretary’s report5. Bulletin Editor’s report6. Proceedings Editor’s report7. New Proceedings8. Webmaster’s report9. Archivist’s report10. Future Meetings11. CSHPM Award12. Phil Math Preprint Archive13. Election results14. Other business15. Thanks from the President

1. The agenda for the general meeting was approved.2. Motion: To approve the minutes of the 2013 An-nual General Meeting as printed in the November 2013Bulletin. Carried unanimously.3. a) Dirk Schlimm pointed out that we have twoaccounts, $US and $Can. PayPal requires that all

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payments go into the $Can account. Dirk transferssome funds to the $US account in order to pay billsand to keep the balance high enough to avoid fees. b)Dirk reinvested a maturing GIC into a fund with aninterest rate that will vary between 1% and 9%, therate being tied to the stock market. c) Motion: Toapprove the report. Passed unanimously.4. a) Patricia Allaire thanked outgoing Treasurer DirkSchlimm for the smooth coordination with her job asSecretary. b) Pat presented comparative membershipdata for 2013 and 2014. (Please refer to the CSHPMExecutive Council Minutes in this issue of the Bul-letin for this data and the Secretary’s comments.) Thenumber of members paying online has increased.5. a) Content Editor, Amy Ackerberg-Hastings, ex-pressed thanks to the other Bulletin editors (EissoAtzema and Maria Zack), to the Secretary and theWebmaster (Pat Allaire and Mike Molinsky), and toall of the contributors. b) Last year, we spoke ofthe possibility of reconfiguring the Bulletin. However,since we are in the process of reconfiguring the Pro-ceedings, the Bulletin will remain as-is for now.c) CSHPM now has a column in CMS Notes. Thefirst column was written by Tom Archibald, and CraigFraser is writing the second. There are six issues peryear, and we would like to have a column in each issue.In response to a question by Tom Drucker, Amy saidthat one need not be a member of CSHPM to writean article for the column. Amy and Hardy Grant arelooking for future contributors and have suggestionsfor topics should someone need an idea about what towrite. Glen thanked Amy and Hardy for their workon this project.6. Tom Archibald sent a report that the Proceedingsare ready for printing. The full text of Tom’s reportis in the minutes of the Executive Council.7. a) Glen Van Brummelen presented a brief history ofthe Proceedings, which began in 1988 as an in-house,unrefereed document. At that time, it was a usefulplace for academics to publish their papers. Such isnot the case now. b) The following motion was pre-sented by Glen and Amy A.-H.:

• That the CSHPM change the Proceedings fromits current members-only publication to an annualvolume available to the public.

• To authorize the President of the CSHPM to sign

an agreement on behalf of the Society for a three-year trial arrangement with Springer/Birkhäuserto publish such a volume.

• To appoint Maria Zack and Elaine Landry as edi-tors for the trial period.

• To revisit the arrangement and the question of thenature of the Proceedings as a publication at the2016 Annual General Meeting.

c) The following points were made with regard to themotion: i) The President will be authorized to sign a3-year trial arrangement with Birkhäuser. At the endof two years, we will decide whether to continue at theend of the trial period. ii) We had to choose betweenan academic publisher (for which we have availableeditors) or an open-source model (for which we haveno editor available). iii) Maria and Elaine will bethe history and philosophy editors, respectively. iv)Maria described the refereeing process and noted thatshe has a very competent assistant to aid with themechanical aspects of the process.d) Cost: Birkhäuser requires that a minimum of35 copies be purchased, with an electronic versionpriced at $29, softcover at $36, and hardcover at $49.Birkhäuser will cover the mailing. The price is guar-anteed for 3 years. CSHPM will subsidize the pricecharged to students, retirees, and members from de-veloping nations. On request, they may obtain anelectronic copy for $15.e) Copyrights: Birkhäuser’s language about copyrightis as follows:“Author retains, in addition to uses permitted by law,the right to communicate the content of the Con-tribution to other scientists, to share the Contribu-tion with them in manuscript form, to perform orpresent the Contribution or to use the content for non-commercial internal and educational purposes pro-vided the Springer publication is mentioned as theoriginal source of publication in any printed or elec-tronic materials.“Author retains the right to republish the Contribu-tion in any collection consisting solely of Author’s ownworks without change and subject only to notifyingSpringer in writing prior to such publication of theintent to do so and to ensuring that the publicationby Springer is properly credited and that the relevantcopyright notice is repeated verbatim.”

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f) Refereeing Process: Criteria will be established.The referee will determine whether the paper is ac-cepted, accepted with minor changes, or rejected.There will be no other options. g) Papers will beaccepted in both English and French. h) If a paper isto be published, it must be presented at the meeting.i) A policy on plagiarism (including self-plagiarism)will be established. j) Michael Williams expressedconcerns that it is customary for publishers to chargeconsiderably more if a copy is mailed to a library, andit has happened that a volume mailed to an institu-tional address is treated by the publisher as mailedto a library. He also is concerned that the author beable to do what he wishes with the paper.8. The Webmaster, Mike Molinsky, reported that theemail discussion list will be closed because it has beenused very rarely. The announcement list, consistingof all members, will remain open.9. As Archivist, Mike Molinsky reported that he addsthe current Bulletins and Proceedings to the electronicarchives each year and will continue to work on scan-ning material into the archives and on doing an inven-tory. He would like photos and papers from the earlydays of CSHPM.The meeting was interrupted at 1:25 pm, when luncharrived, and resumed at 1:45.10. a) Glen Van Brummelen noted that in 2015 we willbe meeting jointly with BSHM and MAA at MathFestin Washington, DC. MathFest is August 5–8; we willmeet August 6–8. 2015 is the centennial of MAA.Steve Kennedy is co-chair of the Centennial Commit-tee, and Amy, Victor Katz, and Maria (as CSHPM’ssession organizer) are on that committee. Robin Wil-son and June Barrow-Green will represent the BSHMon the planning committee. Additional organizers willbe needed. Amy volunteered to be the local orga-nizer; Jean-Pierre Marquis will help with the proposedspeakers in the philosophy sessions. The theme willbe Mathematical Communities. Karen Parshall willbe the May Speaker. Larry D’Antonio suggested thatthe Euler Society participate. Tom Drucker suggestedthat the Philosophy of Mathematics Association joinus.b) For future meetings, our practice has been to de-fault to meeting with the Learneds, which will be inCalgary in 2016. We do not know where CMS willbe meeting. Tom Drucker noted that we do want tomaintain our visibility with CMS.

11. Glen Van Brummelen announced that the 2013winner of the CSHPM Award is Robert Moir, “Ratio-nal Discovery of the Natural World: An Algebraic andGeometric Answer to Steiner.” Since we received $779in contributions earmarked for student travel, we willsupplement that amount and award $800 to the 2014winner. A committee will be selected once we see thepapers that are submitted.12. Elaine Landry asks if we would like to participatein the Phil Math Preprint Archive. The purpose ofthis archive is to allow an author to place a work-in-progress in order to obtain feedback. Members areasked to send her email expressing thoughts on thequestion.13. Patricia Allaire reported that 56 electronic ballotsand 2 paper ballots were submitted. The results of theelection are: President: Elaine LandryVice-President: Dirk SchlimmSecretary: Patricia AllaireTreasurer: David BellhouseCouncil: Craig Fraser, Jean-Pierre Marquis, KarenParshall, Joel SilverbergThe membership applauded outgoing President GlenVan Brummelen to thank him for his service.14. David Bellhouse announced the time and place ofthe dinner with Michael Williams, the May Speaker.15. Glen extended the following thanks: Fran Abeles,Greg Lavers, Adrian Rice, and Sylvia Svitak, outgoingCouncil; Amy Ackerberg-Hastings, Eisso Atzema, andMaria Zack, Bulletin editors; Tom Archibald, MariaZack, and Elaine Landry, outgoing and incoming Pro-ceedings editors; Amy A.-H. and Hardy Grant, CMSNotes column editors; Mike Molinsky, Webmaster andArchivist; Larry D’Antonio and Chris Baltus, orga-nizers for this meeting; Greg Lavers, representative toCFHSS.The meeting was adjourned at 2:17 pm.Patricia Allaire, Secretary

HPM Americas Section at IL State

The Americas Section of the International StudyGroup on the Relations Between History and Peda-gogy of Mathematics met at Illinois State Universityin Normal, IL, April 11–13, 2014. On Friday, April11, Ken Clements and Nerida Ellerton arranged a tour

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of Eyestone School, a 19th-century one-room school-house on the university campus, with discussion oftextbooks and teaching practices. The group thenadjourned to a 21st-century classroom to peruse a se-lection of Ken’s and Nerida’s extensive collection ofmathematics textbooks and cyphering books.Talks on Saturday and Sunday included Stuart Mos-kowitz’s hands-on presentation of using historicalpunchboards to teach probability, Bud Boman’s tourof his computerized mapping of Euclid’s Elements,and Amy Ackerberg-Hastings’s report on teaching his-tory of mathematics to young children via art and ob-jects. Herb Kasube reflected on the role of anecdotesin teaching mathematics and its history, Paul Dawkinsexplored the teaching of axiomatization, and RebeccaVinsonhaler discussed the teaching of infinitesimals.Nicole Wessman-Enzinger categorized number linesfound in arithmetic textbooks, Vince Kirwan lookedat the history of the New Math, and Dave Robertsconsidered the influence of three popular mathematicsbooks on the teaching and learning of mathematics.Josh Hertel, Nerida Ellerton, and Ken Clementslooked at cyphering books for navigation, by girls, andcompared to Thomas Jefferson’s conceptions aboutmathematics education, respectively. Abe Edwardsreported on his evaluation of prospective teachers’ be-liefs about mathematics before and after studying thehistory of mathematics. He joined with Funda Gonu-lates and Jennifer Nimitz to share results of a sim-ilar study of prospective teachers’ experiences withthe history of calculus. Lucian Ionescu ruminated onlessons he conveys about the history of mathemat-ics. Saturday evening, Ken and Nerida hosted dinnerin their home, which is unsurprisingly packed withmathematics textbooks.Ken and Nerida marshaled several current and formergraduate students to help extend hospitality to the at-tendees, and it is clear that they have created a specialplace for studying the history of American mathemat-ics education. HPM Americas Section meetings arealso characterized by the intermixing of a core groupwith a variety of people interested in the intersectionof history and pedagogy in mathematics education.The group joined with the Midwest History of Math-ematics Conference to organize a meeting at WabashCollege, October 17–19, and hopes to gather in Wash-ington, DC, in the spring of 2015 to coincide with anexhibition of Man Ray’s mathematical artwork at the

Phillips Collection.Amy Ackerberg-Hastings

Executive Council Meeting CSHPM/-SCHPM

The meeting of the Executive Council of CSHPM-/SCHPM took place at Brock University in St.Catharines, Ontario, on May 25, 2014. The follow-ing members were present: Francine Abeles, AmyAckerberg-Hastings, Patricia Allaire, Larry D’Antonio,Elaine Landry, Jean-Pierre Marquis, Michael Molin-sky, Dirk Schlimm, Sylvia Svitak, Glen Van Brumme-len, and Maria Zack. Glen Van Brummelen, Presi-dent, called the meeting to order at 12:00 pm.Minutes from the 2013 Executive Council Meetingwere accepted as printed in the November 2013 Bul-letin.President’s Report: Glen Van Brummelen notedthat he had two goals for his term of office: 1) Hehoped to “spread the word” about history and philos-ophy of mathematics within the academic community.One instance of progress in this direction is the columnwe now have in the Canadian Mathematical Society’snewsletter. (See Bulletin Editor’s report below.) 2)He hoped to institute a new format for our Proceedingsto make it more available beyond CSHPM.Treasurer’s Report: Dirk Schlimm reviewed the re-port distributed to the Council and published in theMay 2014 Bulletin. He noted we have a significantsurplus. Larry D’Antonio expressed concern aboutthe cost of food for this conference and asked if wemight consider raising the Society’s portion of the reg-istration fee. As outgoing Treasurer, Dirk thanked inparticular Pat Allaire and Mike Molinsky for facilitat-ing the work of the Treasurer over the past few years,so that it was a very pleasant and enjoyable job.Secretary’s Report: Patricia Allaire expressed herthanks to Mike and Dirk for facilitating the work ofthe Secretary.Pat presented comparative membership data for 2013and 2014:

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2013 2014Total Members 163 164Members By Address or Organization

Can 33 39US 88 88

Other 15 8BSHM 17 19CSHPS 7 8

Complimentary 3 2Members By Status

Active 80 76Retiree 48 42Student 8 7

Developing Nation 2 2Student Associate 3 1MathFest Winner N/A 1

Members by Pay MethodOn-line 83 93

Snail mail 53 32Complimentary N/A 2New Members 17 13

Reciprocal MembershipsTo BSHM 46 49To CSHPS 28 23

Journal SubscriptionsHistoria (paper) 60 61

Historia (electronic) 6 7Philosophia 34 37

Proceedings 62 62Paid 33 34

Complimentary 28 29Federation 1 1

BulletinElectronic 149 ca 127

Paper 53 51Donations

No. Donors 26 24Amount $723.00 $779.00

51 paper Bulletins were mailed, 37 of which went tocurrent members. Others went to the Federation (1),BSHM and CSHPM members (10), and others fromwhom payment is expected (3).Bulletin Editor’s Report: Amy Ackerberg-Hastingsreported that reorganization of the Bulletin had beenconsidered, but for now the newsletter will remain thesame. Looking ahead, suggestions for a new format,

content, frequency, and the like are welcome. Amyexpressed thanks to the co-editors, Eisso Atzema andMaria Zack, and to Pat Allaire and Mike Molinsky fortheir help with electronic distribution.CSHPM now has a column in the CMS Notes, andTom Archibald was the first contributor. Co-editorsAmy A.-H. and Hardy Grant are looking for futurecontributors. They also have suggestions for topics,should someone need an idea about what to write.Proceedings Editor’s Report: Tom Archibald sentthe following report, read by Glen Van Brummelen:“It is doubtless fitting that the CSHPM Proceedingsmoves into the major leagues after my third year ofdilatory service. The 2013 Proceedings should be offgetting printed around the time you hear this report.“I will confess that I voted against the institution ofa Proceedings when they were introduced (or maybeI just thought it was a bad idea, but I seem to recallspeaking against it). Many very good contributionsover the past 26 volumes show me I have been quitewrong.“Nonetheless, I’ll point out that good papers in thehistory and philosophy of mathematics deserve to finda wider readership than can be the case with the kindof limited-circulation proceedings that we have haduntil now. The continued publication of the leadingjournals that accept papers in our field is somewhatat risk, and the field as a whole needs to gain greatervisibility if it is to be more than a hobby. Of course,the presence of enthusiastic amateurs is one of thenice features of the CSHPM meetings. But if we wantto foster high quality research in a way that leads toemployment for scholars, more people need to readour work.“Hence while I hope you will continue to grace thepages of the CSHPM proceedings with your fine es-says, I urge you to submit your research also to theseveral journals that are widely distributed and sub-scribed to by university libraries. I’ll hope also thatthe changes in the Proceedings will lead them to be-come one of these journals on their own. I note thatthe BSHM Bulletin is already being indexed by Math-SciNet and Zentralblatt.“To the proceedings, va de bon coeur, to the futureand past authors va pensiero, and to the future edi-tors, nolite illegitimi carborundudum.”Maria Zack, Amy Ackerberg-Hastings, and Elaine

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Landry then discussed the new format for the Pro-ceedings. A motion will be presented by Glen andAmy to the membership at the AGM. It will be sug-gested that retirees pay $15 if they wish a copy of theProceedings. One paper copy will be needed for theArchives.Webmaster’s Report: Mike Molinsky reportedthat his university no longer supports faculty webservers. Mike is now paying $2 per month for ourweb services. He suggested discontinuing the discus-sion list, as it is seldom used. The Council agreed andsuggested that Mike should announce the cancellationat the AGM.Archivist’s Report: Mike Molinsky adds the cur-rent Bulletins and Proceedings to the electronicarchives each year and will continue to work on scan-ning material into the archives. The Archive shouldcontain a job description (list of responsibilities anddeadlines) from each officer of CSHPM. However, todate the only job descriptions he has are from theWebmaster, Archivist, and Secretary. Other officersare asked to provide theirs.Phil Math Preprint Archive: Elaine Landry asksif we would like to participate. The purpose of thisarchive is to allow an author to place a work-in-progress in order to obtain feedback.2015 Meeting: Maria Zack reported that we willbe meeting jointly with BSHM and MAA at Math-Fest in Washington, DC, August 6–8. Robin Wilsonand June Barrow-Green of BSHM are already com-mitted. This is the centennial of MAA, and Mariais on the Centennial Committee (along with AmyAckerberg-Hastings and Victor Katz). Organizers willbe needed. Amy volunteered to be the local orga-nizer; Jean-Pierre Marquis will help with the proposedspeakers in the philosophy sessions. The theme willbe Mathematical Communities. Karen Parshall willbe the May Speaker. Larry D’Antonio suggested thatthe Euler Society participate.2016 Meeting: CFHSS will be meeting in Calgaryin 2016. We do not know where CMS will be meeting.Student Prize: The 2013 winner is Robert Moir,“Rational Discovery of the Natural World: An Alge-braic and Geometric Answer to Steiner.” A committeewill be selected once we see the papers that are sub-mitted for 2014. Since we received $779 in contribu-tions earmarked for student travel, we will supplement

that amount and award $800 to the winner.2014 Election: The election was held, and resultswill be announced at the AGM.Other Business: Glen expressed thanks to: GregLavers (representative at HSSFC AGM); Larry D’An-tonio and Chris Baltus (regular and special ses-sion organizers); David Bellhouse (local arrange-ments coordinator); the Nominating Committee (TomArchibald, Antonella Cupillari, Fred Rickey); and theCMS Notes column editors (Amy Ackerberg-Hastingsand Hardy Grant). Special thanks were offered tooutgoing Proceedings editor, Tom Archibald, and allthe usual suspects from above. The agenda for tomor-row’s Annual General Meeting was approved.The meeting was adjourned at 1:35 pm.Patricia Allaire, Secretary

Joint AMS/MAA Meetings in SanAntonio

A number of events in history and philosophy of math-ematics have been planned for the Joint Mathemat-ics Meetings, to be held in San Antonio, Texas, Jan-uary 10–13, 2015. More information can be foundon the MAA or AMS websites: www.maa.org orwww.ams.org.

• Saturday, 10 January, 8:00–10:50 and 14:15–18:05,and Sunday, 11 January, 8:00–11:50 and 13:00–15:50: AMS-MAA Special Session on History ofMathematics, organized by Sloan Despeaux, PattiHunter, Deborah Kent, and Adrian Rice. TheSunday morning session includes a panel discus-sion of “Recent Trends in the History of AmericanMathematics,” and the Sunday afternoon sessionincludes a panel discussion of “Common Themesin the History of Ancient and Nonwestern Mathe-matics.”

• Saturday, 10 January, 14:15–16:15, and Monday,12 January, 13:00–15:00: MAA Minicourse on“Humanistic Mathematics,” presented by GizemKaraali and Eric Marland. (NOTE: You must pre-register for this course.)

• Saturday, 10 January, 17:00–19:20: HOMSIG-MAA Guest Lectures, Reception and BusinessMeeting, featuring Kathy Clark and Carl Pomer-ance.

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www.maa.orgwww.ams.org

• Sunday, 11 January, 9:00–9:50: MAA InvitedAddress, “Golden Numbers and Identities: TheLegacy of Rogers and Ramanujan,” by Ken Ono.

• Monday, 12 January, 8:00–10:15 and 13:00–14:55:HOMSIGMAA Session on Ethnomathematics, ATribute to Marcia Ascher, organized by XimenaCatepillan, Amy Shell-Gellasch, and Janet Beery.

• Monday, 12 January, 8:00–10:45 and 13:00–16:45:AMS Special Session on Mathematics in Poland:Interbellum, World War II, and Immediate Post-War Developments, organized by Mohammad Java-heri and Emelie A. Kenney.

• Monday, 12 January, 8:00–10:50: MAA InvitedPaper Session on The Mathematics of Rogers andRamanujan, organized by Ken Ono.

• Monday, 12 January, 9:00–9:50: MAA InvitedAddress, “Divergent Series and Differential Equa-tions: Past, Present, Future . . .” by ChristianeRousseau.

• Monday, 12 January, 11:10–12:00: AMS-MAA In-vited Address, “The Remarkable Journey of theIsoperimetric Problem: From Euler to Steiner toWeierstrauss,” by Richard A. Tapia.

• Monday, 12 January, 17:30–19:20: POMSIGMAAReception and Business Meeting; and Guest Lec-ture, “Mathematical Authority and Inquiry-BasedLearning,” by Matt Jones.

• Tuesday, 13 January, 8:00–10:45 and 13:00–17:45:AMS Special Session on The Scottish Book, orga-nized by Krystyna Kuperberg, R. Daniel Mauldin,and Jan Mycielski.

• Tuesday, 13 January, 8:00–10:25 and 13:00–15:55:POMSIGMAA Session on Discovery and Insightin Mathematics, organized by Dan Sloughter andBonnie Gold.

• Tuesday, 13 January, 8:00–10:50: HOMSIGMAASession on Original Sources and Archives in theClassroom, organized by Amy Shell-Gellasch andDominic Klyve.

• Tuesday, 13 January, 13:00–14:40: AMS Sessionon the History of Mathematics.

• At press time, an MAA General Contributed Pa-per Session on History and Philosophy of Mathe-matics, organized by Kristen Meyer, Bem Cayco,and Kimberly Presser, was planned but not yetscheduled.

Book Review: Count Like an Egyp-tian

Count Like an Egyptian: A Hands-on Introduction toAncient Mathematics, by David Reimer, Princeton:Princeton University Press, 2014, 233 pp. $US29.99.Count Like an Egyptian: A Hands-on Introduction toAncient Mathematics is exactly that. It is very hands-on, and not just in the sense of providing examplesand problems that allow the reader to delve in andtruly do the mathematics as it was done in antiquity.This book is hands-on in that it is beautifully laid outand presented. I would almost describe it as a smallcoffee table book or a presentation book. If you everwanted to give a nice gift to a teacher who loves math,this would be the gift. It is a roughly 10-inch squarehardcover with full color graphics on every one of itsheavyweight glossy pages.This volume is ideal for anyone, and I truly mean any-one, young or old, mathematician, student or teacher,who wants to learn how the ancient Egyptians didmathematics. Along the way, a fair amount of Egyp-tian mythology and history is presented to set thestage. The text flows smoothly and seamlessly fromthe basics of Egyptian numbers, through their arith-metic and on through simple algebraic problems, areasand volumes, measurements and Egyptians’ methodsfor fraction decomposition and completion. The au-thor includes a brief introduction to Babylonian math-ematics and comparison to Egyptian methods. Fi-nally, a comparison of the Egyptian methods to mod-ern topics such as binary mathematics is given with aneye to showing how, in many instances, the Egyptianmethods were more efficient (when compared againstmodern computations by hand—not with a calcula-tor, of course).The author engages the idea of viewing the mathe-matics through the eyes of an Egyptian and not of amodern practitioner. This is vital to presenting themathematics in the correct historical light. If viewedthrough the eyes of modern mathematics, any ancientsystem will seem awkward and ineffective. But whenviewed in context, the reasoning and beauty of thesystem can be conveyed. To do this, one has to try tothink like an Egyptian. The author does a good job ofpresenting what the possible motivations for the prob-lems would be and the settings in which they wouldbe used. In this way, the distinct Egyptian meth-

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ods, such as their interesting use of unit fractions,make more sense. Only at the end, after the authorhas guided us through all the Egyptian mathemat-ics known to us, does he compare it to the modernprocesses. By making this comparison after the fullpresentation of the Egyptian methods, including thecontext, the comparison is much more balanced andthe Egyptian methods seem more appropriate. This“seeing through the eyes of the ancients” is somethingthat even experienced historians struggle with, and Iwas pleased to see it addressed from the very start.I was also happy to see that the important originalsources—the Rhind (A’hmes) Papyrus, the MoscowPapyrus and the Egyptian Mathematical LeatherRoll—are all used extensively. Problems are takenfrom all of these sources and presented in context.Each example is accompanied by well-drawn graph-ics that allow the reader to visualize the problem. Iespecially liked that instead of trying to convert theproblems into modern algebraic notation, the authorused everyday analogies such as money, which stu-dents can relate to easily and which are closer to thehistorical mindset than our modern algebraic one. Myonly complaint about this volume is that no images ofactual Egyptian texts or artwork are given. Thoughextensively illustrated, all the images are computer-generated graphics.This book has all the Egyptian mathematics a generalmathematician, teacher or student could ever want tolearn. In particular it would be a perfect resourcefor a schoolteacher, elementary through lower divi-sion college. The material is presented in a direct andaccessible manner. The book is in no way a scholarlywork and presents no nuanced historical arguments.Which is as it should be; this is a learner’s guide toall the mathematics the Egyptians did. After readingit, you will be well versed in how the ancients did theircomputations so you can count like an Egyptian. Andnow good luck with trying to get the Bangles’ WalkLike an Egyptian (1986) song out of your head!Amy Shell-Gellasch

From the Archives: The First Decadeof Membership

Following the approval of its bylaws on June 3, 1974,the CSHPM/SCHPM membership expanded fairlyquickly, with 27 paid members by August 27 of thatyear and 60 paid members by October 24 (including 11members living in the United States). The followingyear, the membership more than doubled, increasingto 144 members by October 9, 1975. The membershipat that time included 103 living in Canada, as wellas members spread across more than a third of thestates in the USA, and also members from Australia,Columbia, France, Germany, Israel, South Korea andVenezuela.The CSHPM/SCHPM managed to maintain this levelof membership for the next few years, reporting 144total members on both October 9, 1975, and July 5,1976, and then a slight drop to 138 total members byNovember 2, 1977. The membership continued to beinternational across this period; for example, the 1977membership included 92 Canadian addresses, as wellas 35 in the United States and 11 more around theworld, including members in India, Uruguay, Israeland the Dominican Republic.In 1978, there was a significant drop to only 94members, which was apparently related to the factthat the Society was only able to include a sub-scription to Historia Mathematica as a membershipoption to members living in Canada. Although adeal was later reached with Academic Press to allowCSHPM/SCHPM to offer memberships that includedHistoria to those outside of Canada, the membershipdid not immediately rebound to its previous levels. Itdid increase slightly to 102 members by May 1982.Another drop in membership occurred at this point,with only 79 members listed in the membership direc-tory that the Society distributed in May 1984. Thereduced membership that year included 57 memberswith Canadian addresses, 16 in the United States andsix more from other countries, including Switzerlandand Mexico.Mike Molinsky

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Changes to the Proceedings

For several years, it has been increasingly apparentthat the Proceedings are too much work for one per-son. Meanwhile, the nature of scholarly publish-ing has (and continues to) changed, as have criteriafor hiring, promotion, and tenure at many institu-tions. The Council began exploring options in 2013,with an ad hoc committee of Glen Van Brummelen,Maria Zack, and Amy Ackerberg-Hastings doing a fairamount of the legwork. Glen polled the membershipabout pursuing a scholarly publisher or open-sourcepublishing in his November 2013 President’s Message.In the May 2014 issue of the Bulletin, he announcedthat Council would present a motion at this year’sAGM about signing a three-year agreement to havethe Proceedings published as a contributed volume byan academic publisher. You can read the motion anddetails of the discussion in the AGM and ExecutiveCouncil Minutes in this issue.When you renew your membership for 2015, you willfind that the decisions you have to make about the2014 Proceedings have changed. Instead of payingone rate for a paperback copy typeset by the volun-teer Proceedings editor (offered gratis to students, un-employed members, retired members, and membersfrom developing nations), there are several formatsand price points for a volume professionally typesetand distributed by Birkhäuser:

• Electronic version (i.e., a PDF file) – $29

• Softcover – $36

• Hardcover – $49

Members who pay special membership rates (but notreciprocal members) may order the electronic versionat a reduced rate of $15. All prices are guaranteed forthe three years of the agreement.Additionally, libraries, institutions, and the publicwill be able to order copies of the volume directlyfrom Birkhäuser. Thus, our research in the historyand philosophy of mathematics will be available to awider audience. The series will be called Proceedingsof the Canadian Society for History and Philosophyof Mathematics, with each volume’s title referring tothe meeting at which the included papers were pre-sented, e.g. Research in History and Philosophy of

Mathematics: The CSHPM 2014 Annual Meeting inSt. Catharines, Ontario. At press time, it was notconfirmed whether volume numbering would restartfrom 1 or would continue the existing numbering (cur-rently at volume 27).If you presented at the 2014 meeting, you are alreadyaware that there will also be some changes in howthe Proceedings are prepared. Papers were due to theco-editors, Maria Zack and Elaine Landry, by Octo-ber 15. They will then be lightly refereed by CSHPMmembers (accepted, accepted with minor changes, orrejected). Between December 15 and January 15, au-thors will revise their papers and collect formal per-missions for any images. The editors will submit thefull volume to Birkhäuser for typesetting by March15, 2015. As always, only CSHPM members who pre-sented a paper at the AGM will be eligible to havetheir papers published in the Proceedings. (For jointmeetings, members of the other societies participatingin the meeting will also be able to contribute.)The e