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For more on these developments at Hopkins, see Karen Hunger Parshall, “America’s First School of Mathematical Research: James Joseph Sylvester at The Johns Hopkins University 1876-1883,”Archive for History of Exact Sciences 38 (1988), 153–196.
Florian Cajori,The Teaching and History of Mathematics in the United States (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1890), 345–349. The figures for weekly teaching loads were culled from the information Cajori gave on these pages.
David Rowe and I are presently in the final stages of work on a book, entitledThe Emergence of an American Mathematical Research Community: J. J. Sylvester, Felix Klein, and E. H. Moore (tentatively to be published in the American Mathematical Society’s series in the History of Mathematics), which traces the developments just outlined. We have sketched our views in our article “American Mathematics Comes of Age: 1875-1900,” pp. 3–28, in Peter Duren, et al., ed.,A Century of Mathematics in America-Part III, Providence: American Mathematical Society (1989).
Judith V. Grabiner also pointed out this historical use of Cajori’s book in her article, “Mathematics in America: The First Hundred Years,” pp. 9-24, in Dalton Tarwater, ed.,The Bicentennial Tribute to American Mathematics 1776–1976, The Mathematical Association of America (1977).
On Cajori’s life and work, see David Eugene Smith, “Florian Cajori,”Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 36 (1930), 777–780; and Raymond Clare Archibald, “Florian Cajori,”Isis 17 (1932), 384-407.
Uta C. Merzbach made this point in her article “The Study of the History of Mathematics in America: A Centennial Sketch,” pp. 639–666, in Peter Duren, et al., ed.,A Century of Mathematics in America-Part III, Providence: American Mathematical Society (1989).
Recent scholarship has shown that while there is an element of truth in Cajori’s analysis, it is much too simplistic to be historically useful. See, in particular, Helena M. Pycior, “British Synthetic vs. French Analytic Styles of Algebra in the Early American Republic,” in David E. Rowe and John McCleary, ed.,The History of Modern Mathematics, 2 vols., Boston: Academic Press (1989), 1, 125–154.
For the discussion of Cornell and its faculty, see Cajori, pp. 176–187.
For an idea of the advanced, state-of-the-art nature of Peirce’s curriculum, see Cajori, pp. 137–138.
Ibid., p. 180.
Ibid., p. 186.
Ibid., p. 181.
James Oliver, Lucien Wait, and George Jones,A Treatise on Trigonometry, 4th ed., Ithaca: G. W. Jones (1890); andA Treatise on Algebra, 2d ed., New York: Dudley F. Finch (1887).
Cajori, pp. 183–184.
Ibid., pp. 184–185. The textbooks in question are: George Salmon,Lessons Introductory to the Modern Higher Algebra, 4th ed., Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, & Co. (1885); Thomas Muir,The Theory of Determinants With Graduated Sets of Exercises for Use in Colleges and Schools, London: Macmillan & Co. (1882); A. R. Forsyth,A Treatise on Differential Equations, London: Macmillan & Co. (1885); William Burnside and Arthur Panton,The Theory of Equations: With an Introduction to the Theory of Binary Algebraic Forms, Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, & Co. (1886); Georges Halphen,Traité des fonctions elliptiques et de leurs applications, 3 vols., Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1886-1891); and Peter Lejeune-Dirichlet,Vorlesungen über Zahlentheorie, ed. Richard Dedekind, Braunschweig: F. Vieweg und Sohn (1880).
For the sketch on the University of South Carolina and its faculty, see Cajori, pp. 208–214.
See note [2] above.
Cajori, p. 214.
In fact, Davis left South Carolina in 1893, presumably for the greener pastures of the University of Nebraska. He remained in Nebraska for the rest of his career, eventually assuming the Deanship of the College of Arts and Sciences.
Cajori, pp. 196-349. Cajori did not present any of the information gathered from his survey in a coherent way, so the figures that follow have been compiled, as best as possible, from his write-up. Much of the information he gave cannot be used to draw any meaningful conclusions due to the imprecision of the questions as posed. For example, in trying to get a sense of the educational backgrounds of those in his sample space, he asked them to “State time of your special preparation for teaching mathematics. . . .” [Cajori, p. 145]. Some respondents interpreted this as asking for: 1) the number of years teaching experience they had had, 2) the number of years of college they had had, 3) the number of years of graduate training they had received, and 4) the number of years of special instruction in mathematical pedagogy they had had. Thus, his data cannot be used to get an educational profile of his sample space. This probably also accounts for the discrepancy between the figures that follow and those given by Grabiner.
Cajori, pp. 345-349.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 302.
See Delia Dumbaugh and Karen Hunger Parshall, “A Profile of the American Mathematical Research Community: 1891-1906,” forthcoming.
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Parshall, K.V.H. Years ago. The Mathematical Intelligencer 12, 7–11 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03024012
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03024012