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Building an American Mathematical Community from the Ground Up: Artemas Martin and the Mathematical Visitor

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Advances In The History Of Mathematics Education

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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.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A final, short edition of the Mathematical Visitor came in 1894, seven years later, and is not included here.

  2. 2.

    Martin’s registration for the draft (for the U.S. Civil War) lists him still as a resident of Venago County in 1863, and so the family moved sometime between 1863 and 1870 (Artemus Martin 1863).

  3. 3.

    The Mathematical Magazine was meant to be more elementary than the Mathematical Visitor and to reach a wider audience. In the first issue of the Mathematical Magazine, Martin explains that while the Analyst, the Mathematical Visitor, and the American Journal of Mathematics were available in the United States to serve the needs of advanced learners of mathematics, a more elementary journal was needed to serve the needs of average teachers and students (Martin 1882, p. 1).

  4. 4.

    It is curious that this journal and others like it had a primarily pedagogical purpose and yet made no attempt to organize the material in a way that would make it more useful to self-directed learners.

  5. 5.

    While the problem does not clarify, it is apparent from the solution that Martin meant the smallest positive integer values.

  6. 6.

    Martin explains cryptically at the end of issue dated January 1883, “This No. has been delayed a long time in consequence of the ill health and sickness of the Editor. The date on the title-page is January, 1883, but these items [meaning the editorial notes at the end of the volume] were written July 16, 1885” (Martin 1883, p. 64).

  7. 7.

    This included Joel Hendricks of the Analyst, Samuel H. Wright of the Yates County Chronicle, Hudson A. Wood of the National Educator, and William Hoover of the Wittenberger.

  8. 8.

    Normal schools at this time were sometimes classified with secondary schools and sometimes as a special category of higher education. Many eventually became comprehensive colleges (Thelin 2011, pp. 84–85).

  9. 9.

    A short autobiographical sketch of Hudson A. Wood is included in the Yates County Chronicle.

  10. 10.

    A short biography of Hendricks is given in the American Mathematical Monthly (Colaw 1894).

  11. 11.

    Thelin points out that by 1860, there were at least forty-five colleges that granted degrees to women, many were not equivalent to degrees from men’s colleges. Some were nothing more than finishing schools or schools for vocational training (Thelin 2011, p. 83).

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  1. The Brearley School, New York, NY, USA

    Sian E. Zelbo

  2. Stern College for Women, Yeshiva University, New York, NY, USA

    Sian E. Zelbo

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  1. Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Alexander Karp

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Zelbo, S.E. (2022). Building an American Mathematical Community from the Ground Up: Artemas Martin and the Mathematical Visitor. In: Karp, A. (eds) Advances In The History Of Mathematics Education. International Studies in the History of Mathematics and its Teaching. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95235-8_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95235-8_9

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