R.L. Moore

Presents a full and frank biography of a mathematician recognized as one of the principal figures in the 20th Century progression of the American school of point set topology. He was equally well known as creator of The Moore Method (no textbooks, no lectures, no conferring) in which there is a current and growing revival of interest and modified application under inquiry-based learning projects in both the United States and UK. Parker draws on oral history, with first-person recollections from many leading figures in the American mathematics community of the last half-century. The story embraces some of the most famous and influential mathematical names in America and Europe from the late 1900s in what is undoubtedly a lively account of this controversial figure, once described as Mr. Chips with Attitude, who was third in the American Men of Science lists at a time when Einstein was sixth. He was the first American to become a Visiting Lecturer for the American Mathematical Society, held numerous editorial appointments for the Society, was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, published 68 papers and a book which is still referred to seventy years later and which has been the subject of literally hundreds of papers by other mathematicians around the globe. A professional genealogy forms a fascinating sub-text to the book. It describes three of Moore's students who followed him as president of the American Mathematical Society, three others who became vice-presidents, and another who served as secretary of the AMS for many years. Five served as president of the Mathematical Association of America, and three like Moore himself became members of the National Academy of Sciences while most of the rest became highly respected and well published mathematicians and teachers in top flight American universities. Given that the presidencies run for two years, his former students were at the helm of one or other of the two major mathematical organizations in the US for a third of the second half of the 20th Century.