Constance Reid
| Constance Reid | |
|---|---|
| Born | Constance Bowman January 3, 1918 St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. |
| Died | October 14, 2010 (aged 92) San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Mathematics popularizer and biographer |
| Nationality | United States |
| Notable works |
From Zero to Infinity Hilbert Julia: A Life in Mathematics |
| Notable awards |
George Pólya Award Beckenbach Book Prize JPBM Communications Award |
| Spouse | Neil D. Reid |
| Relatives |
Julia Robinson (sister) Raphael M. Robinson (brother-in-law) |
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 comes from a mathematical family: Her sister was Julia Robinson and her brother-in-law was Raphael M. Robinson.
Reid was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Ralph Bowers Bowman and Helen (Hall) Bowman. Her younger sister was the mathematician Julia Robinson. The family moved to Arizona and then to San Diego when the girls were a few years old. 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 from 1939 to 1950, and as a free-lance writer since then. She has said, "I always wanted to be a writer, but it took me a while to find my subject."
Reid's first published work was a memoir of her work in a World War II bomber factory, Slacks and Calluses, published in 1944. She also published a short story.
Her first mathematical publication was an article on perfect numbers for Scientific American. Reid remarked in an interview that some readers objected to her as an author: "But the readers (maybe, just one reader, I have forgotten now) objected that articles in Scientific American should be written by authorities in their fields and not by housewives!"
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