History Question: AUTObiography of Mathematicians - MathOverflow

History Question: AUTObiography of Mathematicians

2012-07-18T23:07:52Z

According to Wikipedia, an autobiography is an account of the life of a person, written by that person sometimes with a collaborator.

An autobiography offers the author the ability to recreate history. From this point of view, to some extent, a mathematician autobiography tell us much about the history of mathematics itself.

The question is: What are some examples of *AUTO*biography books of mathematicians ?

ADDED:

Interesting fact: Is there no AUTObiography of mathematicians written in the 19th century?

Answer by John Stillwell for History Question: AUTObiography of Mathematicians

2012-07-19T00:41:37Z

Here are a few:

Girolamo Cardano: The Book of My Life. (trans. by Jean Stoner. New York: New York Review of Books, 2002)

Norbert Wiener's two volumes

Ex-Prodigy: My Childhood and Youth. (MIT Press 1953)

and

I am a Mathematician. (Gollancz 1956)

Richard Bellman: Eye of the Hurricane (World Scientific 1985)

Laurent Schwartz: A Mathematician Grappling with His Century (Birkhäuser 2001)

Addition. I don't know of any full length autobiography by a 19th century mathematician, but Eisenstein wrote a short autobiography: "Eine Autobiographie von Gotthold Eisenstein." In Eisenstein, G. Mathematische Werke, Band II. New York: Chelsea, pp. 879-904. 1975.

Further addition. There is an English translation of Eisenstein's autobiography here.

Answer by Rob Denomme for History Question: AUTObiography of Mathematicians

2012-07-19T00:45:39Z

You can't miss Goro Shimura's, The map of my life !

Answer by Sam Lisi for History Question: AUTObiography of Mathematicians

2012-07-19T01:00:49Z

Ulam : Adventures of a mathematician
My memory is that it is full of amusing Von Neumann stories.

Answer by Mahmud for History Question: AUTObiography of Mathematicians

2012-07-19T01:22:27Z

Andre Weil's The Apprenticeship of a Mathematician
Marc Kac's Enigmas of Chance: An Autobiography

Answer by David Roberts for History Question: AUTObiography of Mathematicians

2012-07-19T01:37:21Z

Saunders MacLane's and a review in the Notices of the AMS.

Answer by DamienC for History Question: AUTObiography of Mathematicians

2012-07-19T05:54:34Z

Récoltes et semailles, by Alexander Grothendieck (available at the Grothendieck circle), might be considered as an autobiography.

Answer by Filippo Alberto Edoardo for History Question: AUTObiography of Mathematicians

2012-07-19T08:36:50Z

A mathematician's apology by Hardy contains many autobiographical anecdotes about his life and may be could count as a autobiography in some sense.

Answer by Mirco Mannucci for History Question: AUTObiography of Mathematicians

2012-07-19T10:01:07Z

Do not miss Halmos' Automathography : I Want to Be a Mathematician. Halmos was a master writer, extremely entertaining.

Answer by quid for History Question: AUTObiography of Mathematicians

2012-07-19T10:23:15Z

Random Curves: Journeys of a Mathematican by Neal Koblitz.

Excerpt from the publisher's description:

Besides his own personal career in mathematics and cryptography, Koblitz details his travels to the Soviet Union, Latin America, Vietnam and elsewhere; political activism; and academic controversies relating to math education, the C. P. Snow "two-culture" problem, and mistreatment of women in academia.

Answer by Ronnie Brown for History Question: AUTObiography of Mathematicians

2012-07-19T10:27:40Z

Not exactly an autobiography but entertaining and with some autobiographical comments is J.E. Littlewood's "A mathematician's miscellany".

Answer by quid for History Question: AUTObiography of Mathematicians

2012-07-19T10:45:02Z

Eine Frau und die Mathematik 1933--1940: der Beginn einer wissenschafltichen Laufbahn by Hel [Helene] Braun. (My translation of the title: A Woman and Mathematics: 1933--1940: the Beginning of a Scientific Career)

Helene Braun (1914-1986) was a number theorist (thesis under Siegel, 1937, in Marburg) Later she worked at Göttingen, IAS Princeton, and mainly Hamburg (from the 50s until her retirement).

Answer by Denis Serre for History Question: AUTObiography of Mathematicians

2012-07-19T10:55:50Z

The most recent must be Cédric Villani: Théorème vivant (Grasset 2012), available by Aug 22nd !!!

Answer by none for History Question: AUTObiography of Mathematicians

2012-07-19T11:56:17Z

Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe
For 19th century, I've been wanting to read Science and Hypothesis by Henri Poincaré. Not exactly autobiography but he apparently discusses mathematical creativity in it, via analyzing his own thought processes.
Gian-Carlo Rota (1996) Indiscrete Thoughts is probably interesting. I haven't read it yet either.

Answer by Margaret Friedland for History Question: AUTObiography of Mathematicians

2012-07-19T14:53:56Z

Hugo Steinhaus: Wspomnienia i zapiski (Memories and notes), (published posthumously in Wrocław, 2002, 1st edition by Aneks, London, 1992).

To my knowledge, not available in English, but there is a German translation:

Erinnerungen und Aufzeichnungen, Neisse-Verlag, 2010

Personal life, mathematics (with motivation and solution of some problems), interaction with other mathematicians (including Stefan Banach, Bronislaw Knaster, but also Steinhaus's students Stanislaw Ulam and Marek Kac, whose autobiographies are listed here, and many others), academic environment in Poland, World Wars I and II, rebuilding of Western Borderlands after 1945- very engaging and insightful (if sometimes opinionated) writing, little "navel-gazing". And not so easy to google up if you did not already know about it, even if you read Polish.

Answer by PaPiro for History Question: AUTObiography of Mathematicians

2012-07-22T00:07:07Z

Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw, To Talk of Many Things, An Autobiography, Manchester University Press, 2004.

From Google Books

To talk of many things' is a remarkable account of a remarkable life. This story covers two world wars and the near sixty years that followed in a life dominated by mathematics and public service. Profoundly deaf from birth, Dame Kathleen has never seen her condition as an obstacle. She travelled widely through Europe between the wars, was a wartime don at Somerville College, Oxford, served on national education committees from the 1950s onwards, has been at various times on the Boards of the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester Polytechnic and Lancaster and Salford Universities and in the 1990s chased total eclipses of the sun round the globe.A former Lord Mayor and Freeman of the City of Manchester, Dame Kathleen writes compellingly of her greatest enthusiasm - mathematics. The publication of her work on Magic Squares and her presidency of the Institute of Mathematics have been high points in a long and distinguished career.

Answer by YangMills for History Question: AUTObiography of Mathematicians

2012-07-22T15:34:07Z

I think the book The shape of inner space by S.T. Yau with S.Nadis counts too, since more than half of it is an autobiography of Yau (and the other half discusses the implications of his research for string theory).

Answer by PaPiro for History Question: AUTObiography of Mathematicians

2012-08-25T00:33:39Z

Leonhard Euler's autobiography, here

Answer by Francois Ziegler for History Question: AUTObiography of Mathematicians

2012-08-26T01:08:58Z

Analyse des travaux scientifiques de Henri Poincaré faite par lui-même, Acta Math. 38 (1921), 3-135.

Apparently written in 1901 at the request of Mittag-Leffler, this is not quite an autobiography but more in the style of the "Notices sur les travaux scientifiques" that many French scientists wrote, often as candidates to the Academy of Sciences. A 19th century example is Darboux (1884).

Answer by Alexandre Eremenko for History Question: AUTObiography of Mathematicians

2012-12-23T00:32:49Z

Walter Rudin: So hab ich's erlebt. [The way I remember it] From Vienna to Wisconsin—memoirs of a mathematician. Translated from the 1997 English original by Ina Paschen with the assistance of the author. R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich, 1998.
Walter Hayman, My background and early life. Comput. Methods Funct. Theory 8 (2008), no. 1-2, xi–xxvi.