MAA Writing Awards
Moore's Early Twentieth-Century Program for Reform in Mathematics Education
Year of Award: 2002
Publication Information: The American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 108, October, 2001, pp. 689-696
Summary: This paper examines the nature and consequences of an early twentieth-century program to reorient the American mathematical curriculum, led by mathematician E. H. Moore of the University of Chicago.
About the Author: (from The Mathematical Monthly, vol. 108, October (2001)), David Lindsay Roberts is an independent scholar, especially interested in the history of mathematics education. He earned an A.B. in mathematics from Kenyon College in 1973, and then proceeded to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he obtained an M.A. in mathematics and an M.S. in industrial engineering. After eleven years as an operations research analyst, he entered Johns Hopkins University, completing a Ph.D. in the history of science in 1998. Since then, with the aid of the Smithsonian, the Educational Advancement Foundation, and the National Academy of Education, he has been exploring the "New Math" of the 1950s and 1960s.
