"Lecture" for Week 11

All I have to say this week is to summarize two fascinating biographical articles in the Monthly. Since we have a short reading assignment this week, maybe you can find time to read the articles. Both of them are old enough to be accessible online through the TAMU library. (To my consternation, articles in the MAA journals more recent than 2002 do not seem to be available. Apparently we dropped a subscription.)
Galois
T. Rothman, "Genius and biographers: The fictionalization of Evariste Galois", Amer. Math. Monthly 89, 84-106 (1982). This article reinforces my initial warning not to believe everything you read about the history of mathematics, especially when written by nonprofessional historians. In particular, the statement that Galois "hurriedly [wrote] out his discoveries on group theory" the night before his duel is an exaggeration. (He had been writing manuscripts for several years and trying to get them published, but for a combination of reasons they had not been published. What he did that night was to write a summary in a letter to a friend and also to go through the manuscripts and annotate them. At least that's what Rothman -- who is not a professional historian either -- says.)
Bell
Rothman is especially hard on the author Eric Temple Bell. Bell's books on mathematics and mathematicians were immensely popular around the middle of the 20th century; I read several when I was in high school. Today they are out of favor, being regarded as inaccurate and antifeminist (although I think no more sexist than most books about math history from that period and earlier). That's why they are not listed in any Math. 629 web pages, although more than one of them would qualify as math history books on the basis of content. It turns out that Bell himself was a strange character (he had some private demons, as they say). There is an article about him by Constance Reid, Am. Math. Monthly 108, 393-402 (2001).