scholarship

I recently finished my doctorate in Princeton’s Program in the History of Science program. Most simply put, my doctoral dissertation asks, why is math weird? or better yet, why does math seem weird compared to other subjects? To find out, I follow esteemed mathematician Bernhard Riemann’s creation of an important mathematical document, “On the Hypotheses Which Underlie Geometry,” his 1854 habilitation lecture at the University of Göttingen. I show how “particularity” was an advantageous socio-academic tool in the mid-nineteenth-century German university, one which Riemann used strategically in creating his lecture, which put forward a new vision of the mathematical practice. Riemann carefully presented himself, his scholarship, and space (the subject of his scholarship) as particular in some ways and typical in others; striking the right balance was crucial to his later successes.

I describe some of the characters of my dissertation at more length here.