Mathematical People: Profiles and Interviews

When thinking of this book, the emphasis should be on the word "people" rather than the word "mathematical." For mathematicians experience the same things is life that all others do, everything from the thrill of a wondrous proof or the landing of a dream job to the tension of performance anxiety, the loss of a job and the frustrations of what is just basic living. This book is a series of interviews of 25 of the most famous mathematicians of the middle and late twentieth century. The people featured are: *) Garret Birkhoff *) David Blackwell *) Shiing-Shen Chern *) John Horton Conway *) H. S. M. Coxeter *) Persi Diaconis *) Paul Erdos *) Martin Gardner *) Ronald L. Graham *) Paul R. Halmos *) Peter J. Hilton *) John Kemeny *) Morris Kline *) Donald Knuth *) Benoit Mandelbrot *) Henry O. Pollak *) George Polya *) Mina Rees *) Constance Reid *) Herbert Robbins *) Raymond Smullyan *) Olga Taussky-Todd *) Albert W. Tucker *) Solomon Lefschetz *) Stanislaw M. Ulam The style of the statements ranges from the unusual to the extremely serious. While all are interesting in that they present mathematicians as people, I found the two most interesting to be those about Ronald Graham and Raymond Smullyan. Graham's because he could have been a successful circus performer and Smullyan because his path to mathematics was so unusual. Smullyan was teaching college math classes before receiving his bachelor's degree and some of the courses he was given credit for in his bachelor's degree was awarded for his teaching rather than taking the classes. By presenting mathematicians as people working their way through life, this book helps dispel the myth that mathematicians are by necessity extremely unusual.