Joan Livingston Richards (born 1948)[1] is an Americanhistorian of mathematics and a professor of history atBrown University, where she directs the Program of Science and Technology Studies.[2]
Richards graduatedmagna cum laude fromRadcliffe College in 1971. She completed a Ph.D. in the history of science atHarvard University in 1981.[3] Her dissertation,Non-Euclidean Geometry In Nineteenth-century England: A Study of Changing Perceptions of Mathematical Truth, was supervised byI. Bernard Cohen.[4]
After postdoctoral research atCornell University, she joined the Brown University faculty in 1982, and was promoted to full professor in 2001.[3]
Richards is the author of the monographMathematical Visions: The Pursuit of Geometry in Victorian England (Academic Press, 1988)[5] and of a memoir on her struggle to balance her academic work with caring for a son with a brain tumor,Angles of Reflection: Logic and a Mother's Love (W. H. Freeman, 2000).[6]
She is the co-editor ofThe Invention of Physical Science: Intersections of Mathematics, Theology and Natural Philosophy since the Seventeenth Century, Essays in Honor of Erwin N. Hiebert (withMary Jo Nye andRoger H. Stuewer, Kluwer, 1992).[7]
