Florian Cajori was born in Switzerland in 1859 and came to the United States at the age of 16. After studying at the University of Wisconsin and getting his PhD at Tulane, he embarked on a career of research on the history of mathematics.
Cajori was a leading scientific intellectual of his day. In 1917-18 he was president of MAA, and in 1923 was vice president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1918 he was appointed to the first chair in America devoted to the history of mathematics, at U. California at Berkeley. Prior to his appointment at Berkeley, he taught at Tulane and at Colorado College. He died in 1930 after having published 9 books on the history of mathematics. A crater of the moon is named for him.
Cajori's 1890 book The Teaching and History of Mathematics in the United States can be regarded as the founding of the study of the history of teaching college mathematics in the United States. In this book, Cajori presents the curricula of about 20 undergraduate colleges around 1890. We're happy to follow in his footsteps with the Cajori Two project in which we survey the 20th century at various points in time.
Click here for more information about Florian Cajori.
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