David Eugene Smith

David Eugene Smith (1860 to 1944) was an American mathematician, teacher and historian of mathematics who did more than almost anyone of his generation to bring the history of the subject into the way it is taught. Born in Cortland, New York, he trained first as a lawyer and took a doctorate in the history of fine arts before his gift for teaching drew him to mathematics at the Cortland Normal School. He later held posts at the Michigan State Normal School in Ypsilanti and at Brockport Normal School, and from 1901 he was professor of mathematics at Teachers College, Columbia University, where he retired in 1926. With W W Beman he wrote widely used textbooks, and his own papers and books treated both mathematical education and the history of mathematics. He collected an extraordinary library of books, manuscripts, portraits and letters, giving it to Columbia University in 1931, and added a collection of early calculating and measuring instruments in 1936. He served as president of the Mathematical Association of America in 1920 and 1921, as a vice-president of the American Mathematical Society, and founded the History of Science Society and the journal Scripta Mathematica.