Constance Reid

Constance Bowman Reid (January 3, 1918 – October 14, 2010) was the author of several biographies of mathematicians and popular books about mathematics. She received several awards for mathematical exposition. She was not a mathematician but came from a mathematical family—one of her sisters was Julia Robinson, and her brother-in-law was Raphael M. Robinson.

Background and education Reid was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Ralph Bowers Bowman and Helen (Hall) Bowman. In 1950 she married a law student, Neil D. Reid, with whom she had two children, Julia and Stewart.

Reid received a Bachelor of Arts degree from San Diego State University in 1938 and a Master of Education degree from University of California, Berkeley in 1949. She worked as a teacher of English and journalism at San Diego High School from 1939 to 1950, and as a free-lance writer since then.

The Scientific American article led to an invitation from Robert L. Crowell of the Thomas Y. Crowell Co. publishing house to write "a little book on numbers" After travelling to Göttingen to absorb some mathematical culture, Reid decided instead to write a full-length biography of David Hilbert, who she considered the greatest mathematician of the first half of the twentieth century. for her article "The Autobiography of Julia Robinson" Mathematical Association of America's Beckenbach Book Prize in 1996 for her book The Search for E. T. Bell : Also Known as John Taine Joint Policy Board for Mathematics 1998 Communications Award for the body of her work in bringing accurate mathematical information to non-mathematical audiences

Publications

From zero to infinity. What makes numbers interesting. Fifth edition. Fiftieth anniversary edition. A K Peters, Ltd., Wellesley, MA, 2006. xviii+188 pp.

A long way from Euclid. Reprint of the 1963 original. Dover Publications, Inc., Mineola, NY, 2004. Courant in Göttingen and New York. The story of an improbable mathematician. Springer-Verlag, New York–Heidelberg, 1976. Reprint of the 1976 original: Copernicus, New York, 1996. Neyman. Reprint of the 1982 original. Springer-Verlag, New York, 1998. Hilbert. Reprint of the 1970 original. Copernicus, New York, 1996. Julia. A life in mathematics. MAA Spectrum. Mathematical Association of America, Washington, DC, 1996. The Search for E. T. Bell : Also Known as John Taine. Mathematical Association of America, Washington, DC, 1993. Slacks and Calluses: Our Summer in a Bomber Factory (autobiography) Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, 1999. Reprint of Longmans, Green, New York, 1944 edition.