Constance Bowman Reid (January 3, 1918 – October 14, 2010)[1][2]was theauthor of several biographies ofmathematicians and popular books aboutmathematics. She received several awards for mathematical exposition. She was not a mathematician but came from a mathematical family—one of her sisters wasJulia Robinson, and her brother-in-law wasRaphael M. Robinson.
Reid was born inSt. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Ralph Bowers Bowman and Helen (Hall) Bowman.[2] One of her younger sisters was the mathematicianJulia Robinson. The family moved toArizona and then toSan Diego when the girls were a few years old.[3]: 1, 5 In 1950 she married a law student, Neil D. Reid, with whom she had two children, Julia and Stewart.[2][4]: xiii
Reid's first published work was a memoir of her work in aWorld War II bomber factory,Slacks and Calluses, published in 1944. She also published a short story.[2]
Her first mathematical publication was an article onperfect numbers forScientific American.[2] Reid remarked in an interview that some readers objected to her as an author: "But the readers (maybe, just one reader, I have forgotten now) objected that articles inScientific American should be written by authorities in their fields and not by housewives!"[6]: 272
TheScientific American article led to an invitation from Robert L. Crowell of theThomas Y. Crowell Co. publishing house to write "a little book on numbers"[7] that becameFrom Zero to Infinity. Two more popular math books for Crowell followed:Introduction to Higher Mathematics for the General Reader in 1959 andA Long Way from Euclid in 1963.
After writing these books she felt she had run out of ideas, and her sisterJulia Robinson suggested that she should updateEric Temple Bell's collection of mathematical biographies,Men of Mathematics.[8]: 1488 After travelling toGöttingen to absorb some mathematical culture, Reid decided instead to write a full-length biography ofDavid Hilbert, who she considered the greatest mathematician of the first half of the twentieth century.[8]: 1489 Julia encouraged her in this project, and the biography was published in 1970 asHilbert. The Hilbert biography was a success among mathematicians,[8]: 1489 and her next book was a biography of another Göttingen figure,Richard Courant, published in 1976 asCourant in Göttingen and New York. Her next book, published in 1982, was a biography of the mathematical statisticianJerzy Neyman, who like Courant had emigrated to the United States and built a new career there.[6]: 279
An attempt to write a biography ofEric Temple Bell proved unexpectedly difficult, as he had been very secretive about his early life. Reid discovered that Bell, a native of Scotland, as a young man had spent twelve years in theUnited States but had never revealed this to his wife or his son. The resulting book,The Search for E. T. Bell, published in 1993, is more of a detective story than a true biography.[2]: 354
Her sister Julia gradually became more famous, and was elected to theUnited States National Academy of Sciences in 1976 and President of theAmerican Mathematical Society in 1983. Several people had suggested to Constance that she write a biography of Julia, but Julia always refused to cooperate because she felt scientific biographies should be about science, not about personalities.[8]: 1491 In 1985, when Julia was dying, she unbent enough to allow Constance to write a biographical sketch of her, that was published after Julia's death as "The Autobiography of Julia Robinson" (written by Constance but written in the first person as if by Julia)[8]: 1491 The sketch was published with additional material as a book,Julia: A Life in Mathematics in 1996.
Joint Policy Board for Mathematics 1998 Communications Award[7] for the body of her work in bringing accurate mathematical information to non-mathematical audiences
Reid, Constance; Robinson, Julia (1986). "The Autobiography of Julia Robinson".College Mathematics Journal.17 (1). Mathematical Association of America:2–21.doi:10.2307/2686866.JSTOR2686866.
Introduction to Higher Mathematics: For the General Reader. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell. 1959.[12]
A long way from Euclid. Reprint of the 1963 original. Dover Publications, Inc., Mineola, NY, 2004.ISBN0-486-43613-6
Courant in Göttingen and New York. The story of an improbable mathematician. Springer-Verlag, New York–Heidelberg, 1976.ISBN0-387-90194-9 Reprint of the 1976 original: Copernicus, New York, 1996.ISBN0-387-94670-5[13]
Julia. A life in mathematics. MAA Spectrum. Mathematical Association of America, Washington, DC, 1996.ISBN0-88385-520-8
The Search for E. T. Bell : Also Known as John Taine. Mathematical Association of America, Washington, DC, 1993.ISBN0-88385-508-9[14]
Slacks and Calluses: Our Summer in a Bomber Factory (autobiography) Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, 1999. Reprint of Longmans, Green, New York, 1944 edition.ISBN1-56098-368-X
^abcde"Being Julia Robinson's Sister"(PDF).Notices of the American Mathematical Society.43 (12). Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society:1486–1492. December 1996.ISSN0002-9920. RetrievedJune 7, 2008.
