January 24-25, 2003
Xavier University
Members in attendance:
Richard Davitt, University of Louisville
Thomas Hern, Bowling Green State University
Rebecca Kessler, Miami Univeristy, Middletown (1/24)
Daniel Curtin, Northern Kentucky University (1/24)
David Kullman, Miami Univeristy
Charles Holmes, Miami University
Charles Groetsch, University of Cincinnati
Daniel Otero, Xavier University
Chris Christensen, Northern Kentucky University
We gathered for our traditional Friday evening meal at Sturkey's in Wyoming, Ohio, a restaurant noted for its fish plates. We were duly impressed by the fine dining experience...oh, the desserts! We were especially pleased to have lured first-time members, Tom Hern and Becky Kessler, to join us.
We reassembled in Hinkle Hall for our Friday session. The meeting was devoted to a study of the work of Eliakim Hastings Moore, pioneer of American research mathematics, native Ohioan and graduate of Cincinnati's Woodward College. Much was said about Moore's local connection (a pity that we could not have arranged a visit to the Woodward High School museum), and Parshall & Rowe's Emergence of the American Mathematical Community, as well as G. A. Bliss' obit of Moore from the 1933 Monthly were invaluable resources. (Commendations also to Dick Davitt, who manages to cart half a library along to our meetings. His resources are often central to helping us to answer the questions we raise.) After a time, we began to slog our way through Moore's paper, A doubly infinite system of simple groups, the paper he read at the 1893 International Mathematical Congress, in which he contributed to the early work on the classification of finite groups.
On Saturday morning, after the pleasant breakfast, we read Moore's AMS Presidential Address of December, 1902, On the Foundations of Mathematics, in which he speaks to the recent program of the algebraization of geometry being carried out under the names of Hilbert and Klein and its ramifications for teaching mathematics in the U.S.
We agreed to meet again in September or early October (exact date left to be agreed) at NKU to read some of the work of George Pólya.
Respectfully submitted,
Danny Otero