James R. Newman
James Roy Newman (1907–1966) was a mathematician and mathematical historian. He was also a lawyer, practicing in the state of New York from 1929 to 1941. During and after World War II, he held several positions in the United States government, including Chief Intelligence Officer at the US Embassy in London, Special Assistant to the Undersecretary of War, and Counsel to the US Senate Committee on Atomic Energy. He became a member of the board of editors for Scientific American beginning in 1948.
He was the editor of the anthology The World of Mathematics: A small library of the literature of mathematics from A'h-mosé the Scribe to Albert Einstein, presented with commentaries and notes (1956), which contains exactly what it claims to. The four volume series covers many branches of mathematics and represents a 15 year effort by Newman to collect what he felt were the most important essays in the field. With essays ranging from a biography of Srinivasa Ramanujan by Newman to Bertrand Russell's Definition of a Number, the series is often praised as suitable for any level of mathematical skill. The series has been reprinted several times by various publishers.
Newman also wrote Gödel's Proof (1958) with Ernest Nagel, presenting the main results of Gödel's incompleteness theorem and the mathematical work and philosophies leading up to its discovery in a more accessible manner. This book inspired Douglas Hofstadter to take up the study of mathematical logic, write his famous book Gödel, Escher, Bach, and prepare a second edition of Gödel's Proof, published in 2002.
External links
- "Where Are You When I Need You, James R. Newman?", a poem dedicated to Newman and The World of Mathematics.
- "The World of Mathematics by James R. Newman", -- a 1989 book review in the journal Nature by David E. H. Jones.
References
Newman, James (1956). The World of Mathematics (hardback), New York: Simon and Schuster, 2535. Libarary of Congress number 55-10060.
Newman, James [1956] (2003). The World of Mathematics (paperback), reprint, New York: Dover, 2480. ISBN 0-486-43268-8.
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