This book traces the history of the MIT Department of Mathematics—one of the most important mathematics departments in the world—through candid, in-depth, lively conversations with a select and diverse group of its senior members. The process reveals much about the motivation, path, and impact of research mathematicians in a society that owes so much to this little understood and often mystifying section of its intellectual fabric.

At a time when the mathematical experience touches and attracts more laypeople than ever, such a book contributes to our understanding and entertains through its personal approach.

Reviews

Recountings provides a history of the MIT Mathematics Department, as told through interviews conducted with 12 of its current and former faculty members, plus Zipporah (Fagi) Levinson, widow of Norman Levinson (and one-time 'den mother' of the department). . . . What emerges is a piecemeal yet compelling portrait of the department's rapid post-WW II transformation from a program largely focused on offering mathematical instruction to engineering students, to a world-class research enterprise. Along the way, readers encounter tales about the inimitable and eccentric Norbert Wiener, but also learn how longtime department head W. T. Martin and driving force Norman Levinson—and many others—oversaw the department's growth, crafted its faculty, managed the conflicts between the pure and applied mathematicians, and maintained strength in both research and education. Academic mathematicians (including those lacking any MIT connection) will find much to enjoy, and academic administrators much to consider emulating. . . . Highly recommended.

-- CHOICE Magazine, July 2009

Recountings tells of the influential US mathematics department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) through interviews with a dozen faculty members by author Joel Segel. . . The interest in teaching among these senior faculty members iand deep. . . The professors share their strategies for achieving research success, from working on prize problems to developing an intuitive feel for proofs. They explain how new research directions have come from interactions with students and colleagues or from writing a review article. . . [T]he insights in [this book] will inspire mathematicians and scientists to come.

-- NATURE, August 2009

Students currently contemplating or pursuing a mathematics-related career should find MIT's oral history illuminating and thought provoking. It is a remarkable institutional story, recalled and superbly narrated by those much concerned.

-- H. Don Allen, Mathematics Teacher, November 2009

The book as a whole is a fascinating mosaic of the rise of a mathematical department to a prominent position among the world's most distinguished mathematical institutions. In addition to this, the interviews reaveal facets of the process of mathematical discovery, the motivat...