Contributors to the Mathematical Visitor

Zelbo, Sian. 2022. Building an American mathematics community from the ground up: Artemas Martin and the Mathematical Visitor (1877-1887). InAdvances in the History of Mathematics Education: International Studies in the History of Mathematics and Its Teaching, ed. Alexander Karp, 218-238. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95235-8_9

Abstract:

The Mathematical Visitor, a nineteenth-century American journal, was published regularly from 1877 to 1887, at an inflection point for the American mathematical community. The journal was started a year before James Joseph Sylvester started the American Journal of Mathematics at Johns Hopkins University, an event recognized as marking the beginning of research mathematics in the United States, which until this point had lagged behind Europe. The Mathematical Visitor is often mentioned merely as a step in the evolution of American journals. In fact, the Mathematical Visitor was never meant to produce research mathematics. Its purpose, instead, was education. The Mathematical Visitor was an early effort at outreach by the country’s top mathematical figures, including Benjamin Peirce and James Joseph Sylvester, to cultivate mathematical interest and talent in an era when the country’s schools were not yet equipped for that task. Viewing the journal in this light allows for a deeper understanding of the development of the American mathematics community and also situates this research within a body of international research about outreach efforts by mathematicians to influence and support pre-college mathematics education in their countries.

The document below gives the names of the mathematics professors, teachers, engineers, farmers, students, and other individuals who contributed to the Mathematical Visitor by sending in problems and solutions. Where it was possible to identify the individuals and find more information about them, that information is provided.