Mathematics and the Historian's Craft

• Introduction: The Birth and Growth of a Community.- History or Heritage? An Important Distinction in Mathematics and for Mathematics Education.- Ptolemy’s Mathematical Models and their Meaning.- Mathematics, Instruments and Navigation, 1600–1800.- Was Newton’s Calculus a Dead End? The Continental Influence of Maclaurin’s Treatise of Fluxions.- The Mathematics and Science of Leonhard Euler (1707–1783).- Mathematics in Canada before 1945: A Preliminary Survey.- The Emergence of the American Mathematical Research Community.- 19th Century Logic Between Philosophy and Mathematics.- The Battle for Cantorian Set Theory.- Hilbert and his Twenty-Four Problems.- Turing and the Origins of AI.- Mathematics and Gender: Some Cross-Cultural Observations.

From the reviews: "The full set of Kenneth O. May Lectures given at the Annual meetings of the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics since 1988, are presented in this volume as a tribute to Kenneth May ... . The essays, varying greatly in nature as well as scope, concern themes of interest to the Society ... . this book contains a lot of interesting material besides: there is something for just about every one, not just specialists in the History of Mathematics. Recommended!" (Michael Berg, MathDL - Online, April, 2006) "This collection of papers contains extended versions of selected lectures delivered at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Mathematics ... . The papers are written not only for historians of mathematics but also, in particular, for others who are interested in the nature and beauty of mathematics. ... The book will be very helpful for historians and philosophers of mathematics, for teachers at universities and secondary schools, and students as well as researchers in mathematics and history." (EMS Newsletter, June, 2006) "The essays collected in this volume are based on keynote lectures given at annual meetings of the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics (CSHPM/SCHPM). ... most of the material is accessible to a wide mathematical audience and the engaging quality of the writing makes for excellent reading. The book would make a welcome addition to any academic library and could certainly be used as a resource for undergraduate research projects." (Robert E. Bradley, Historia Mathematica, Vol. 34, 2007)