Tom  Archibald

I am a Professor in the Dept. of Mathematics at Simon Fraser University, where I was Chair from 2005-2010 and again for the exciting year 2020. I enjoy working here a lot; it is a great department. The picture above is getting old, but I don't really have a better one. An. overly long CV is here.

Current Teaching

In the past few years I have been doing undergraduate teaching in history of mathematics and a variety of other courses, including Precalculus, Calcuus for Life Science, and an Undergraduate Seminar on Special Functions.

Current Research Interests

In recent years, my research has concentrated on the history of integration theory in the 20th century. Besides this, I have gotten sidetracked in various ways, the most significant of which has been the recently(2024)-published Bloomsbury Cultural History of Mathematics, where I co-edited vols. 5 and 6 with David Rowe. There are some good essays in these volumes! Read them all and see if you agree with me.

Students

I have been very lucky in graduate students.

At present I have one MSc student, Alicia Zelenitsky Hill, who is doing a thesis on a seventeenth-century Japanese treatise, the Kokon Sanpoki.

Brenda Davison, of SFU's Math Dept., recently (2023) competed a Ph. D. thesis on the history of divergent series in the nineteenth century. Brenda continues her work as a Senior Lecturer here.

Another recent MSc student, Kailyn Pritchard, was supervised jointly with Glen van Brummelen, completing a thesis on Joachim Rheticus' trigonometrical tables, Kailyn is now doing a PhD in Math. Ed. at SFU.

Mu Ruiping of Northwest University, Xi'an, China worked under my cosupervision, completing her PhD at that institution in 2019 with a thesis discussing mathematical work of Lord Kelvin. She is now a lecturer at the same university, working with her supervisor Qu Anjing.

My PhD student Jemma Lorenat finished in April 2015 and now is a tenured Associate Professor at Pitzer College, Claremont, California. Lorenat's work concerns the debates concerning analysis and synthesis in early nineteenth-century geometry in France and Germany. She was in a cotutelle arrangement between SFU and the Université Sorbonne - Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris 6, where she was supervised by Catherine Goldstein.  Jemma won the Montucla Prize of the International Commission for the History of Mathematics for the best article over a four-year period by a junior scholar to appear in Historia Mathematica. At present she is also an editor of the history pages in the Mathematical Intelligencer.

I am lucky to have been involved (Nils Bruin and Michael Monagan were the senior supervisors) in a master's thesis by Steven Kieffer on the history of computational algebraic number theory from Hensel to Zassenhaus.

Four other students have completed MSc theses:

Laura E. Turner, M. Sc. August 2007 on G. Mittag-Leffler. Turner obtained a PhD. at Aarhus University in Denmark and is now a tenured Associate Professor in the Dept. of Mathematics at Monmouth University in New Jersey.

Marcus E. Barnes, M. Sc. Nov. 2007 on John Charles Fields. Marcus works in information technology at U. of T. and is embarking on a PhD in Information Science.

Menolly Lysne, M. Sc. June 2010 on P. S. de Laplace's relations with D'Alembert and Lagrange, and his early work in celestial mechanics and DEs.  Menolly is currently teaching at the secondary level in the Lower Mainland.  

Brenda Davison, M. Sc. July 2010 on G. H. Hardy's early work.

All the theses can be found (either now or soon) in the SFU Library.

Prospective Students: Writing in Spring 2024: I am planning to retire sufficiently soon that I will not take any more PhD students, unfortunately. I will continue to consider people for the MSc who have sufficient background. Feel free to get in touch to discuss.

Contact

I can be emailed at tarchi(at)sfu.ca.