Karen Parshall

Karen Hunger Parshall (born 1955, Virginia; née Karen Virginia Hunger) is an American historian of mathematics.

Career and works

Parshall studied Romance languages, such as French, and mathematics at the University of Virginia, where she earned her master's degree in mathematics in 1978. She earned her PhD in 1982 in the history of mathematics from the University of Chicago under the direction of the historian Allen G. Debus (1926–2009) and the mathematician Israel Herstein. The subject of her dissertation is the history of the theory of algebras, especially the work of Joseph Wedderburn (The contributions of J. H. M. Wedderburn to the theory of algebras, 1900–1910). From 1982 to 1987 Parshall was an assistant professor at Sweet Briar College and in 1987/88 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Since 1988 she has taught the history of mathematics, and also mathematics and the history of science, at the University of Virginia, where she became in 1988 an assistant professor, in 1993 an associate professor and in 1999 a professor. She was a visiting professor at the Australian National University in Canberra and at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (1985).

Parshall's academic specialty is the development of mathematics in the USA in the late 19th century and early 20th century (particularly the Chicago School).[1] As one example, she has studied the work of Leonard Dickson,[2] who was greatly influenced by contact with German mathematicians such as Felix Klein at the time of the Columbian Exposition of 1893.[3] She has also focused on the history of algebra. She edited the correspondence of James Joseph Sylvester published by Oxford University Press and wrote a biography of Sylvester.

in the academic year 1996/97 Parshall was a Guggenheim Fellow. In 1994 she was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Zürich (Mathematics in National Contexts (1875–1900): An International Overview). Since 2002 she has been a corresponding member of the Académie internationale d’histoire des sciences in Paris. From 1996 to 1999, she was editor of the journal Historia Mathematica. Parshall was in the governing body of the History of Science Society and from 1998 to 2001 of the American Mathematical Society (AMS).

In 2012, she became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.[4]

Works

Sources

References

  1. Karen Parshall: The One-Hundredth Anniversary of Mathematics at the University of Chicago, The Mathematical Intelligencer 14, 1992, pp. 39–44
  2. Karen Parshall: A Study in Group Theory: Leonard Eugene Dickson's Linear Groups, The Mathematical Intelligencer 13, 1991, pp. 7–11
  3. Karen Parshall, David E. Rowe: Embedded in the Culture: Mathematics at the World’s Columbian Exposition, The Mathematical Intelligencer 15, 1993, pp. 40–45
  4. List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society, retrieved 2013-05-05.
  5. also treated in Karen Parshall: The One-Hundredth Anniversary of the Death of Invariant Theory?, The Mathematical Intelligencer 12, 1990, pp. 10–16
  6. Reid, Constance (1995). "Review of The Emergence of the American Mathematical Research Community 1876–1900: J. J. Sylvester, Felix Klein, and E. H. Moore by Karen Hunger Parshall and David E. Rowe" (PDF). Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.). 32 (3): 349–351. doi:10.1090/s0273-0979-1995-00595-1.
  7. Merzbach, Uta C. (2001). "Review: James Joseph Sylvester: Life and work in letters, by Karen Hunger Parshall" (PDF). Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.). 38 (1): 79–82. doi:10.1090/s0273-0979-00-00882-x.
  8. Rowe, David E. (2003). "Review: Mathematics unbound: The evolution of an international mathematical research community, 1800–1945, by Karen Hunger Parshall and Adrian C. Rice (eds.)" (PDF). Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.). 40 (4): 535–542. doi:10.1090/s0273-0979-03-00990-x.
  9. Grabiner, Judith (2007). "Review: James Joseph Sylvester: Jewish mathematician in a Victorian World, by Karen Hunger Parshall" (PDF). Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.). 44 (3): 481–485. doi:10.1090/s0273-0979-07-01145-7.

External links

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