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CERTAIN MODERN IDEAS AND METHODS: “GEOMETRIC REALITY” IN THE MATHEMATICS OF CHARLOTTE ANGAS SCOTT

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2019

JEMMA LORENAT
JEMMA LORENAT*
Affiliation:
Pitzer College
*
*PITZER COLLEGE 1050 N MILLS AVENUE CLAREMONT, CA 91711, USA Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Charlotte Angas Scott (1858–1932) was an internationally renowned geometer, the first British woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics, and the chair of the Bryn Mawr mathematics department for forty years. There she helped shape the burgeoning mathematics community in the United States. Scott often motivated her research as providing a “geometric treatment” of results that had previously been derived algebraically. The adjective “geometric” likely entailed many things for Scott, from her careful illustration of diagrams to her choice of references and citations. This article will focus on Scott’s striking and consistent use of geometric to describe a reality of dynamic points, lines, planes, and spaces that could be manipulated analogously to physical objects. By providing geometric interpretations of algebraic derivations, Scott committed to an early-nineteenth-century aesthetic vision of a “whole” analytical geometry that she adapted to modern research areas.

Keywords

010200A30Charlotte Angus Scottgeometrymathematical aestheticsmathematical ontologyvisualizationnineteenth century
Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Symbolic Logic , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , December 2020 , pp. 681 - 719
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Copyright
Copyright © Association for Symbolic Logic 2019 

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