- Carl Benjamin Boyer
Infobox biography
name=Carl Benjamin Boyer
lived=birth date|1906|11|3 – death date and age|1976|4|26|1906|11|3
placeofdeath=New York, New York, USACarl Benjamin Boyer (
November 3 ,1906 –April 26 ,1976 ) has been called the "Gibbon of math history;" [cite web
author=David Foster Wallace|title=An excerpt from "Everything and More"|url=http://www.conjunctions.com/webcon/wallace.htm|accessdate=2007-08-28] he was also a historian ofscience . [cite web|title=Topics|url=http://historyofscience.virtualave.net/topics.htm|accessdate=2007-08-28] He wrote the books "History of Analytic Geometry", "The History of the Calculus and Its Conceptual Development", [cite web|title=Relativity Simply Explained|url=http://www.doverdirect.com/0486293157.html|accessdate=2007-08-28] "A History of Mathematics", and "The Rainbow: From Myth to Mathematics". [cite web|title=The Rainbow: From Myth to Mathematics|url=http://acept.asu.edu/PiN/references/boyer.shtml|accessdate=2007-06-29] He served as book-review editor of "Scripta Mathematica ". [cite web|title=Scripta Mathematica|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=zeQSAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Carl+B.+Boyer%22&dq=%22Carl+B.+Boyer%22&pgis=1|accessdate=2007-10-21]Boyer was
valedictorian of hishigh school class. He received anA.B. fromColumbia College in 1928 and an M.A. in 1929. [cite web|title=Elog: Carl B. Boyer|url=http://www.jstor.org/view/00211753/ap010189/01a00070/0|accessdate=2007-08-28]He married the former Marjorie Duncan Nice. [cite web|title=Elog: Carl B. Boyer|url=http://www.jstor.org/view/00211753/ap010189/01a00070/1?frame=noframe&userID=8ddb2c2c@mtu.edu/01cce4405c00501c748f7&dpi=3&config=jstor|accessdate=2007-08-28]
He was a 1954 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow. [cite web|title=John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation 1954 Fellow Page|url=http://www.gf.org/54fellow.html|accessdate=2007-06-29]
He died of a heart attack in New York.
The Carl B. Boyer Memorial Prize was established by his widow in his memory [cite web|title=Columbia College Bulletin|url=http://www.college.columbia.edu/bulletin/prizes.php|accessdate=2007-06-29] to be awarded to the
Columbia University undergraduate writing the best essay on any scientific or mathematical topic.Notes
References
* [http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Extras/Boyer_Foremost_Text.html Carl B Boyer's Foremost Modern Textbook: An International Congress of Mathematicians was held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA from 30 August to 6 September 1950]
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