Jump to content

Dirk Jan Struik

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dirk Jan Struik
Dirk Jan Struik
Born(1894-09-30)September 30, 1894
Rotterdam, Netherlands
DiedOctober 21, 2000(2000-10-21) (aged 106)
Belmont, Massachusetts, U.S.
Nationality United States
Alma materUniversity of Leiden
Known forA Concise History of Mathematics
A Source Book in Mathematics, 1200–1800
Spouse
​
(m. 1923)​
Children3; Dr. Ruth Rebekka Struik
Anne Macchi
Gwendolyn Bray
AwardsKenneth O. May Prize (1989)
Scientific career
FieldsMultidimensional geometry, history of mathematics
InstitutionsMassachusetts Institute of Technology, Delft University of Technology
Doctoral advisorW. van der Woude
Jan Schouten
Doctoral studentsJoseph Dauben
Judith Grabiner
Eric Reissner
Domina Eberle Spencer

Dirk Jan Struik (September 30, 1894 – October 21, 2000) was a Dutch-born American (since 1934) mathematician, historian of mathematics, and Marxist theoretician who spent most of his life in the U.S.[1][2][3]

Early life

[edit]

Dirk Jan Struik was born in 1894 in Rotterdam, Netherlands. His father Hendrik was a grammar school teacher with a passion for mathematics. Nearly a century later when Dirk received a Kenneth O. May Medal, he began his acceptance speech with a tribute to Hendrik Jan Struik for cultivating his son's appetite for knowledge.[4] From 1906 to 1911, Dirk attended the Hogere Burgers School in Rotterdam, where he was introduced to left-wing politics and socialism by a favorite math teacher, G. W. Ten Dam.[5]

After entering the University of Leiden in 1912, Struik showed great aptitude for mathematics and physics. He was taught there by eminent professors Hendrik Lorentz, Willem de Sitter, and Paul Ehrenfest.[6] The unconventional Ehrenfest was said to have exerted the greatest influence on Struik's thinking.[7]

In 1917, to help cover university expenses, Struik worked for a while as a high school math teacher. He was next hired as a research assistant to Professor J. A. Schouten at Delft University. It was during this period that Struik developed his doctoral dissertation, "The Application of Tensor Methods to Riemannian Manifolds."[6]

In 1922, Struik obtained a doctorate in mathematics from University of Leiden. He was appointed to a teaching position at University of Utrecht in 1923. That same year he married Saly Ruth Ramler,[8] a Czech mathematician with a doctorate from the Charles University of Prague. They remained married until her death in 1993.

Career

[edit]

In 1924, funded by a Rockefeller fellowship, Struik traveled to Rome to collaborate with the Italian mathematician Tullio Levi-Civita. It was in Rome that Struik first developed a keen interest in the history of mathematics. In 1925, thanks to an extension of his fellowship, he went to Göttingen to work with Richard Courant where he got the opportunity to edit Felix Klein's unpublished lectures on 19th century mathematics.[4] While at Göttingen, Struik made extensive use of the university's library to research Renaissance mathematicians.[6] He also rekindled interest in a mistaken claim Aristotle had made that space could be tiled with congruent tetrahedra. Aristotle's error was first challenged in 1435.[9]

In 1926, Struik was offered positions as a lecturer in mathematics at Moscow State University and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He decided to accept the latter offer, and spent the rest of his academic career there. He was promoted to associate professor in 1931, and was made a full professor in 1940.[10] While at MIT, he collaborated with Norbert Wiener on differential geometry.

In 1936, Struik co-founded Science & Society. It would become the world's longest continuously running journal of Marxist scholarship.[11] He regularly contributed articles to Science & Society, primarily on the history of science.

Political controversy

[edit]

Struik was a steadfast believer in Marxism. Having joined the Communist Party of the Netherlands in 1919, he remained a Party member his entire life. When asked in 1994, upon the occasion of his 100th birthday, how he managed to still author peer-reviewed journal articles at such an advanced age, Struik replied blithely that he had the "3Ms" a man needs to sustain himself: Marriage (although he was recently a widower at that time), Mathematics, and Marxism.

During the early 1950s McCarthy era, Struik's Marxist opinions led to accusations of him being a spy for the Soviet Union. He was also cited as a "subversive influence in the educational process" in a U.S. Senate committee publication.[12] He denied the allegations, and was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) on July 24, 1951. Struik refused to answer the more than 200 questions asked of him, repeatedly invoking the Fifth Amendment's shield against self-incrimination.[6] (He had planned to invoke the First Amendment, but a recent U.S. Supreme Court case struck down that option.) On September 12, 1951, Struik was indicted by a Middlesex County grand jury for "conspiracy to overthrow the governments of the United States and Massachusetts, and for advocating the overthrow by violence of the government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts". He was released on $10,000 bail.[13] Soon thereafter, the MIT faculty voted to suspend him, with full salary, until the case was resolved. In April 1953, the head of the MIT mathematics department, William Ted Martin, testified to the HUAC that he and Struik had both been members of an MIT communist cell between 1938 and 1946.[13]

The indictment against Struik was quashed in 1956 by Judge Paul G. Kirk after the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled in a different case that the federal Smith Act superseded state sedition laws. MIT lifted Struik's suspension on May 26, 1956,[14] and he was reinstated as a faculty member.[15] He retired from MIT in 1960.

Publications

[edit]

Struik's most celebrated work was A Concise History of Mathematics. Originally published in 1948, it went through four revised editions and was translated into eighteen languages.[4] Among his other works that became standard textbooks or references were Yankee Science in the Making (1948) and A Source Book in Mathematics, 1200–1800 (1969).

In 1950, Struik published his Lectures on Classical Differential Geometry,[16] which garnered praise from Ian R. Porteous:

Of all the textbooks on elementary differential geometry published in the last fifty years the most readable is one of the earliest, namely that by D.J. Struik (1950). He is the only one to mention Allvar Gullstrand.[17]

In 1971, Struik edited The Birth of the Communist Manifesto. He began the book with a lengthy introductory essay, "Birth of the Communist Manifesto and its Historical Significance", which explicates the social and intellectual milieu from which the 1848 Manifesto emerged. In addition to supplying the full text of the document, with his annotations, Struik included as Appendices all Prefaces by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels for the various language editions of the Manifesto, plus two preliminary Manifesto drafts by Engels, one of which had recently been found at the time Struik's book was published.[18]

Later years

[edit]

In 1972, Struik was made an honorary research associate in the History of Science Department at Harvard University.[10] In 1989, he and Adolph P. Yushkevich were the inaugural winners of the Kenneth O. May Prize in the History of Mathematics.[19][20]

On October 21, 2000, three weeks after celebrating his 106th birthday, Dirk Struik died at his home in Belmont, Massachusetts.[1]

Books

[edit]
  • 1928: Het Probleem 'De impletione loci' (Dutch), Nieuw Archief voor Wiskunde, Series 2, 15 (1925–1928), no. 3, 121–137.
  • 1948: Yankee Science in the Making, Boston: Little Brown.
  • 1950: Lectures on Classical Differential Geometry, Addison-Wesley.
  • 1953: Lectures on Analytic and Projective Geometry, Addison-Wesley.
  • 1957: The Origins of American Science (New England) via Internet Archive.
  • 1971: (editor) Birth of the Communist Manifesto, New World Paperbacks ISBN 0717802884.
  • 1986: (editor) A Source Book in Mathematics, 1200–1800, Princeton University Press ISBN 0-691-08404-1, ISBN 0-691-02397-2 (pbk).
  • 1987: A Concise History of Mathematics, fourth revised edition, Dover Publications ISBN 0-486-60255-9, ISBN 978-0-486-60255-4.

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b Saxon, Wolfgang (October 26, 2000). "Dirk J. Struik; Historian Was 106". The New York Times. Retrieved September 29, 2018.
  2. ^ Davis, Chandler; Tattersall, Jim; Richards, Joan; Banchoff, Tom (June–July 2001). "Dirk Jan Struik (1894-2000)" (PDF). Notices of the American Mathematical Society (AMS). 48 (6): 584–589.
  3. ^ Rowe, David E. (September 2002). "Dirk Jan Struik, 1894–2000". Isis. 93 (3): 456–459. doi:10.1086/374064. S2CID 143979122.
  4. ^ a b c Rowe, David E. (2001). "Looking back on a bestseller: Dirk Struik's A Concise History of Mathematics" (PDF). Notices of the AMS. 48 (6): 590–592.
  5. ^ "An Interview with Dirk Struik on the Eve of His One Hundredth Birthday" (PDF). The College Mathematics Journal. 33 (3): 178–187. May 2002 – via De Anza College.
  6. ^ a b c d O'Connor, J. J.; Robertson, E. F. (December 1997). "Dirk Jan Struik - Biography". MacTutor.
  7. ^ Alberts, Gerard (1994). "On Connecting Socialism and Mathematics: Dirk Struik, Jan Burgers, and Jan Tinbergen" (PDF). Historia Mathematica. 21: 280–305.
  8. ^ "Élie Cartan et Saly Ruth Ramler – Médias – MSN Encarta". Archived from the original on 24 May 2024.
  9. ^ Struik, D. J. (1926). "Het probleem 'De Impletione Loci'". Nieuw Archief voor Wiskunde. 2nd ser. 15: 121–134. JFM 52.0002.04.
  10. ^ a b "Struik straddled worlds of mathematics, Marxist politics". MIT News. 14 September 1994.
  11. ^ "Science & Society". JSTOR. 2019.
  12. ^ Subversive Influence in the Educational Process: Hearings Before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws to the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Eighty-second Congress, Second Session, Eighty-fourth Congress, First Session. United States, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1952.
  13. ^ a b Garfinkel, Simson L. (29 June 2022). "How an MIT Marxist weathered the Red Scare". MIT Technology Review.
  14. ^ "Struik Suspension Lifted by M. I. T.; Status Unsettled". The Boston Globe. 27 May 1956.
  15. ^ "Deaths: Dirk J. Struik, Mathematician". The Washington Post. October 29, 2000. Retrieved 2 October 2018.
  16. ^ Bompiani, E. (1951). "Review: Lectures on classical differential geometry by D. J. Struik" (PDF). Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 57 (2): 154–155. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1951-09487-2.
  17. ^ Porteous, Ian R. (2001) Geometric Differentiation, p. 319, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-00264-8
  18. ^ "Birth of the Communist Manifesto". International Publishers. Retrieved 27 January 2025.
  19. ^ Dauben, Joseph W. (1999). "Historia Mathematica: 25 Years/Context and Content". Historia Mathematica. 26 (1): 1–28. doi:10.1006/hmat.1999.2227.
  20. ^ "Kenneth O. May Prize in the History of Mathematics". International Mathematical Union (IMU). 15 November 2017. Retrieved 1 March 2024.

Sources

[edit]
Obituaries
  • G. Alberts, and W. T. van Est, Dirk Jan Struik, Levensberichten en herdenkingen (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 2002), pp. 107–114. [1] (in Dutch)
  • MIT News Office (2000-10-25). Mathematician Professor Dirk Struik dies at 106. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, accessed 2007-07-23
[edit]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dirk_Jan_Struik&oldid=1272260053"