Mathematicians and Navigators

Mathematicians and the Market

Introduction Young mathematicians have been facing dismal job prospects throughout the nineties. The fall unemployment rate for new Ph.D.s in the U.S., as measured by the AMS-IMS-MAA Annual Survey (Second Report), rose from 2.5% in 1990 to a peak of 13.2% in 1994.1 Unemployment rates have fallen moderately since to the current level of 9.5% in 1996. This is not the first time that labor market ...

Markets, Mandarins, and Mathematicians

I would like tobegin on a personal note, in part to expiatepast sins of omission, partly to allow me to illustrate a major theme of this paper. Though I began the study of economics at Oxford in 1960, to my shame the sole work of Peter Bauer’s that I had read until fairly recently was Indian Economic Policy and Development (1961). Leafing through my copy of Bauer’s book to prepare this paper, I...

Multifaceted Mathematicians

Murderers , Mathematicians ∗

This article outlines the history of our visualization of the interior of the human body. It throws some light on the emotional context and the underlying idea of man. In order of appearance on the historical stage, the leading characters are: painters, murderers (more precisely: executed persons including thieves driven merely by need, women with illegitimate children, etc.), and mathematician...

Mathematics, Mathematicians, and Mathematics Education

I am one of a growing number of research mathematicians who are substantially engaged with school mathematics education. Such outreach has a long and honorable tradition. In this lecture, I illustrate some of the ways that I think this can be helpful, and even essential. Upon his retirement in 1990 as president of the ICMI, Jean Pierre Kahane spoke perceptively of the intimate connection betwee...