Reuben Hersh

Short description: American mathematician (1927–2020)

Hersh in 1979

Reuben Hersh (December 9, 1927 – January 3, 2020) was an American mathematician and academic, best known for his writings on the nature, practice, and social impact of mathematics. Although he was generally known as Reuben Hersh, late in life he sometimes used the name Reuben Laznovsky in recognition of his father's ancestral family name. His work challenges and complements mainstream philosophy of mathematics.

## Contents

* 1 Education
* 2 Academic career
* 3 Books
* 4 See also
* 5 Notes
* 6 References
* 7 External links

## Education

After receiving a B.A. in English literature from Harvard University in 1946, Hersh spent a decade writing for Scientific American and working as a machinist. After losing his right thumb when working with a band saw, he decided to study mathematics at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. In 1962, he was awarded a Ph.D. in mathematics from New York University; his advisor was P.D. Lax. He was affiliated with the University of New Mexico since 1964, where he was professor emeritus.

## Academic career

Hersh wrote a number of technical articles on partial differential equations, probability, random evolutions (example), and linear operator equations. He was the co-author of four articles in Scientific American, and 12 articles in the Mathematical Intelligencer.

Hersh was best known as the co-author with Philip J. Davis of The Mathematical Experience (1981), which won a National Book Award in Science.[1][lower-alpha 1] Hersh and Martin Davis won the 1984 Chauvenet Prize for their Scientific American[2] article on Hilbert's tenth problem.

Hersh advocated what he called a "humanist" philosophy of mathematics, opposed to both Platonism (so-called "realism") and its rivals nominalism/fictionalism/formalism. He held that mathematics is real, and its reality is social-cultural-historical, located in the shared thoughts of those who learn it, teach it, and create it. His article "The Kingdom of Math is Within You" (a chapter in his Experiencing Mathematics, 2014) explains how mathematicians' proofs compel agreement, even when they are inadequate as formal logic. He sympathized with the perspectives on mathematics of Imre Lakatos and Where Mathematics Comes From, George Lakoff and Rafael Nunez, Basic Books.[clarification needed][citation needed]

## Books

* 1981, Hersh and Philip Davis. The Mathematical Experience. (Mariner Books, 1999).
* 1986, Hersh and Philip Davis. Descartes' Dream: The World According to Mathematics. (Dover, 2005)
* 1997\. What Is Mathematics, Really? Oxford Univ. Press.
* 2006, edited by Hersh. 18 Unconventional Essays on the Nature of Mathematics. Springer Verlag.
* 2009, Hersh and Vera John-Steiner. Loving and Hating Mathematics. Princeton University Press
* Greenwood, P.; Hersh, R. "Stochastic differentials and quasi-standard random variables", Probabilistic methods in differential equations (Proc. Conf., Univ. Victoria, Victoria, B. C., 1974), pp. 35–62. Lecture Notes in Math., Vol. 451, Springer, Berlin, 1975.
* 2014, Reuben Hersh. Experiencing Mathematics: What do we do, when we do mathematics? American Mathematical Society.
* 2015, Reuben Hersh. Peter Lax: Mathematician. American Mathematical Society.

## See also

* Influence of non-standard analysis

## Notes

1. ↑ This was the 1983 award for paperback Science.
From 1980 to 1983 in National Book Award history there were dual hardcover and paperback awards in most categories, and several nonfiction subcategories including General Nonfiction. Most of the paperback award-winners were reprints, including this one.

## References

1. ↑ "National Book Awards – 1983". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-07.
2. ↑ Davis, Martin; Hersh, Reuben (1973). "Hilbert's 10th Problem". Scientific American (Springer Science and Business Media LLC) 229 (5): 84–91. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1173-84. ISSN 0036-8733. Bibcode: 1973SciAm.229e..84D.

## External links

* Humanizing Mathematics and its Philosophy: Essays celebrating the 90th Birthday of Reuben Hersh
* The Ideal Mathematician, with Phillip Davis (Note: Google.com, somewhat unfortunately, decides to redirect this link weirdly, as of May 2018).
* Web page at the Univ. of New Mexico.
* Published Articles at googlesites.
* AMS video interview with Reuben Hersh part 1

* v
* t
* e

Chauvenet Prize recipients

* 1925 G. A. Bliss
* 1929 T. H. Hildebrandt
* 1932 G. H. Hardy
* 1935 Dunham Jackson
* 1938 G. T. Whyburn
* 1941 Saunders Mac Lane
* 1944 R. H. Cameron
* 1947 Paul Halmos
* 1950 Mark Kac
* 1953 E. J. McShane
* 1956 Richard H. Bruck
* 1960 Cornelius Lanczos
* 1963 Philip J. Davis
* 1964 Leon Henkin
* 1965 Jack K. Hale and Joseph P. LaSalle
* 1967 Guido Weiss
* 1968 Mark Kac
* 1970 Shiing-Shen Chern
* 1971 Norman Levinson
* 1972 François Trèves
* 1973 Carl D. Olds
* 1974 Peter D. Lax
* 1975 Martin Davis and Reuben Hersh
* 1976 Lawrence Zalcman
* 1977 W. Gilbert Strang
* 1978 Shreeram S. Abhyankar
* 1979 Neil J. A. Sloane
* 1980 Heinz Bauer
* 1981 Kenneth I. Gross
* 1982 No award given.
* 1983 No award given.
* 1984 R. Arthur Knoebel
* 1985 Carl Pomerance
* 1986 George Miel
* 1987 James H. Wilkinson
* 1988 Stephen Smale
* 1989 Jacob Korevaar
* 1990 David Allen Hoffman
* 1991 W. B. Raymond Lickorish and Kenneth C. Millett
* 1992 Steven G. Krantz
* 1993 David H. Bailey, Jonathan M. Borwein and Peter B. Borwein
* 1994 Barry Mazur
* 1995 Donald G. Saari
* 1996 Joan Birman
* 1997 Tom Hawkins
* 1998 Alan Edelman and Eric Kostlan
* 1999 Michael I. Rosen
* 2000 Don Zagier
* 2001 Carolyn S. Gordon and David L. Webb
* 2002 Ellen Gethner, Stan Wagon, and Brian Wick
* 2003  Thomas C. Hales
* 2004 Edward B. Burger
* 2005 John Stillwell
* 2006 Florian Pfender & Günter M. Ziegler
* 2007 Andrew J. Simoson
* 2008 Andrew Granville
* 2009 Harold P. Boas
* 2010 Brian J. McCartin
* 2011 Bjorn Poonen
* 2012 Dennis DeTurck, Herman Gluck, Daniel Pomerleano & David Shea Vela-Vick
* 2013 Robert Ghrist
* 2014 Ravi Vakil
* 2015 Dana Mackenzie
* 2016 Susan Marshall & Donald R. Smith
* 2017 Mark Schilling
* 2018 Daniel J. Velleman
* 2019 Tom Leinster

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