Underwood Dudley

Underwood Dudley ( born January 6, 1937 in New York City ) is an American mathematician and nonfiction author of Mathematics.

Dudley studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and received his doctorate at the University of Michigan in 1965 with William LeVeque (The distribution modulo 1 of oscillating functions). He taught for two years at the Ohio State University and then from 1957 until his retirement in 2004 at DePauw University.

He was since 1996 editor of the College Mathematics Journal and Phi Mu Epsilon Journal. He is the author of several popular science books on mathematics for the Mathematical Association of America ( MAA ), the " Pólya Lecturer" he was in 1995 and of which he was awarded the Trevor Evans Award for his books. He was also editor of two mathematical book series of the MAA.

Among other things, treat his books angle three-piece suit, Kreisquadrierer and other mathematical astray, so he was already unsuccessfully sued by William Dilworth, an amateur mathematician, who said to have Cantor's diagonal proof refuted and had published about 1974 in the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences. Dilworth, the Dudley treated in his book Mathematical Cranks, resented the designation Crank, in English for about fanatical owl or madman. In the judgment of Judge Richard Posner put the definition of a Crank ago as a person who is possessed of irrational reasons of an idea without scientific basis, which wasted their time with an obviously misguided and hopeless thought of a temperament tilt out.

Dudley has also written textbooks, for example on elementary number theory.

Writings

  • The Trisectors, MAA 1996
  • Elementary Number Theory, Freeman, San Francisco 1978
  • Readings for Calculus, MAA 1993
  • The power of the number. What Numerology wants us to know, Birkhauser 1999 ( English: Numerology, or What Pythagoras wrought, MAA 1997)
  • Mathematics between delusion and wit, Birkhauser 1995 (English original: Mathematical Cranks, MAA 1992)
  • Is Mathematics inevitable? A Miscellany, MAA 2008
  • Owen O'Shea The magic numbers of the professor, MAA 2007
  • A guide to elementary number theory, MAA 2010
  • A budget of trisections, Springer Verlag 1987
Squaring the circle Cantor's diagonal argument Mathematics Genealogy Project Integrated Authority File
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