◀ ▲ ▶History / 20th-century / Person: Iii, Clifford Ambrose Truesdell
Person: Iii, Clifford Ambrose Truesdell
Clifford Truesdell was an American mathematician best known as a historian of science.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- Perhaps a more detailed look at the "Clifford Ambrose Truesdell" name would be more helpful.
- The original Clifford Ambrose Truesdell was born in 1863 (and died in 1937).
- These men had a major influence on Truesdell who received a B.S. (Mathematics) and a B.S. (Physics) in 1941.
- After receiving his first degree, Truesdell continued to work at Caltech for his Master's Degree in mathematics which he was awarded in 1942.
- But Bateman was also a man who "saw the whole of the mathematical sciences as a continuum without compartments" and who "saw no difference in style or standard between pure mathematics and applied", values that Truesdell's own research were to exemplify.
- Leaving Caltech, Truesdell went to Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where he was employed as an Assistant in Mechanics in the School of Mathematical Mechanics.
- His thesis advisor at Princeton was Solomon Lefschetz but Truesdell had begun work on his thesis during the summer of 1942 while at Brown University.
- While at Princeton working on his thesis, Truesdell attended Alonzo Church's graduate course Introduction to Mathematical Logic and the notes that he took became Church's book published with this title in 1944.
- After rapidly obtaining a Ph.D. from Princeton, Truesdell was employed for the year 1943-44 as an Instructor of Mathematics at Michigan University.
- An excellent example of this is Truesdell's major paper The mechanical foundations of elasticity and fluid mechanics (1952).
- Truesdell was asked by T Y Thomas to join him in founding a new journal and they set about the task of founding the Journal of Rational Mechanics and Analysis.
- However, only five volumes of the Journal were published before a new head of department at Indiana removed Truesdell as an editor and changed the name of the Journal.
- However, Truesdell was able to continue publication of the journal under the title Archive for Rational Mechanics and Analysis when Springer-Verlag agreed to take over publication in December 1956.
- Truesdell now became the sole editor-in-chief and most of the editorial team of the Journal joined the Board of the Archive.
- Truesdell felt the house was not sufficiently Renaissance, so he engineered and oversaw a variety of changes to create a more Italian feel.
- We have given some indication of Truesdell's mathematical contributions but to illustrate these further the reader might like to look at some of the books he published.
- The extracts from reviews and Prefaces that we present give considerable insight into Truesdell's style and range of contributions.
- Truesdell retired from his chair at Johns Hopkins University in 1989 and was made Professor Emeritus.
Born 18 February 1919, Los Angeles, California, USA. Died 14 January 2000, Baltimore, USA.
View full biography at MacTutor
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Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
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- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
