Blog posts written for the BSHM appear below.
Good Friday, April 15, 2022 / Erev Pesach, Yom Shishi, 14 Nisan, 5782.
By happy coincidence, this day is important for both Easter and Passover: Good Friday today, and the first Passover Seder tonight, after sundown.
But how do we know when it’s Easter or when it’s Passover?
Since this blog post is being hosted by the British Society for the History of Mathematics website, let’s hear what a historic British authority on Christian Calendrics had to say:
Yom revi'i, 27 Adar II, 5782.
In my previous Time Zones blog post I introduced you to the presence of Sir Sandford Fleming in three standard sources for Canadian history:
Yom shlishi, 28 Adar 5782.
One of the few benefits of the Pandemic has been an increase in mathematical literacy, especially in the traditional mass media, such as newspapers.
I was reminded of this, when I saw the centrespread “Folio” article in a recent issue of Toronto, Ontario’s, Globe and Mail. It was entitled, “We have the supply and appointments – so why are so many kids unvaccinated?”
The story is illustrated by half a dozen graphic representations of data, situated in the lower right-hand corner.
Yom rishon, 19 Adar I, 5782.
The importance of knowing your Time Zones was exemplified in the Schedule of last year’s very successful BSHM/CSHPM/HOMSIGMAA Conference, which began:
“Times are given as:
BST = British Summer Time, e.g. London (UTC+1),
EDT = Eastern Daylight Time, e.g. Toronto (UTC-4),
PDT = Pacific Daylight Time, e.g. Vancouver (UTC-7).
Yom shishi, 10 Sivan, 5781.
Our title “Half an hour later in Newfoundland” is a standard joke line in Canadian comedy and is based on the fact that Standard Time on the Island of Newfoundland is in Zone P* = EST + 1h 30m (Toronto) = UTC - 3h 30m (London, UK [London, Ontario, which shares EST with Toronto, is also on a River Thames, but that’s another story]). The rest of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, that is mainland Labrador, is in Zone Q = Atlantic Standard Time = EST + 1h = UTC - 4h.
Welcome to the Talks page of the BSHM Christmas Meeting 2020
bshm_christmas_meeting_2020_abstracts.pdf
The talks will be played in live sessions, followed by Q&A, at the times shown below. However, recordings are also available from Friday afternoon for those who cannot make the live sessions. Each talk is approx 30 mins long.
Earlier this year, I submitted papers related to different parts of my dissertation work to three different conferences: the History of Science Society, the American Historical Association, and the Joint Meeting of the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America. These meetings were originally scheduled to take place in New Orleans, Seattle, and Washington, DC, respectively.
I started using lockdown to tackle the 6 cubic metres of my mother’s papers – a task put off for the last 5 years. But I was stopped in my tracks at box 1 when I found a postcard of this picture, “African teaching mathematics to the Greeks”. It shows a Black African teaching geometry to the ancient Greeks and is one of a series of murals by Earl Sweeting.
Now that the summer session has mostly wrapped up at Cornell, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on my experiences teaching the history of science and mathematics. I recently finished teaching a 3-week course called “Science, Technology, and Politics,” a version of which I also taught last summer. The course this year was different in many ways, including its suddenly online format, yet much was also the same. Many students struggled to work through the same kinds of questions and analyses that challenged last year’s students as well.
We are grateful to David Orenstein for sharing with us a letter from Bertrand Russell's time in prison, which links thematically to our Mathematics in Times of Crisis conference. The notes below the link come from David himself.