Making Mathematics American: Gender, Professionalization, and Abstraction during the Growth of Mathematics in the United States, 1890-1945

Abstract

This dissertation tells the story of how mathematics was made American. Like other American sciences, mathematics in the United States shifted during the Progressive Era from practical and educational activities toward research. Unlike other American sciences, however, American mathematics grew conspicuously apart from physical reality. Taking their cue from prominent scholars in places like France and Germany, mathematicians in the United States began building and working to define abstract mathematical systems. By following their European counterparts into abstract, so-called “modern” fields of research, however, American mathematicians risked alienation in a nation known for its “Yankee ingenuity” and practical know-how. This dissertation argues that, while the growth of mathematics in the United States meant establishing societies, journals, and graduate programs, it also meant reconfiguring what counted as mathematical work, who counted as a mathematician, and how each was thought to contribute to American society. While early-twentieth-century Americans were working to build a mathematics community, prominent researchers in Europe were working to rebuild the foundations of mathematics itself. Foundational questions, in turn, led some to reconsider the epistemological status and meaning of mathematical knowledge, as well as its value and values. By exploring foundational studies in the United States alongside popular, administrative, and biographical sources, this dissertation analyzes the growth of American mathematics as a series of scientific and cultural negotiations. Specifically, it considers the role of abstract research in redefining both the relevance of mathematics and what it meant to be an American mathematician. By choosing to encode their professional identities in the ideals of modern abstractions, mathematicians in the United States forfeited access to traditional forms of masculinity that were associated with military or industrial applications. Instead, they marshalled other forms of manliness tied to nostalgic traditions of farm work, rugged individualism, and, eventually, professional exclusivity and prestige. Overall, this dissertation identifies three ways in which mathematics was made compatible with American ideals: through the well-worn narrative of the self-made man, in proximity to American Pragmatism, and by asserting both scientific support for and humanist critiques of modern industrial progress.