Biography:Muriel Seltman

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Short description: British left-wing activist, mathematics educator, historian of mathematics, and author

Muriel Seltman (27 March 1927 – 2 December 2019)[1] was British left-wing activist, mathematics educator, historian of mathematics, and author of books on mathematics, religion, politics, and philosophy.

Life

Seltman was born in Stamford Hill, a Jewish neighborhood of London,[2] on 27 March 1927.[1] She studied mathematics and mathematics education at Trinity College Dublin,[3] and met her husband there.[4] They joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1952,[5] but by the early 1960s had been expelled from the party for their anti-revisionism (sympathy for Maoism and opposition to the Khrushchev Thaw).[4] They traveled with their son to North Korea,[5] where Seltman worked as a teacher, but, bored with the North Korean cult of personality and their life there,[4] left for China in 1965, just in time for the Cultural Revolution. Disillusioned, they returned to England in 1966,[5] and Seltman later wrote a book What's Left? What's Right? describing her experiences.[4]

She taught mathematics at Avery Hill College beginning in 1968, retiring in 1981 but continuing on a part-time basis for another 20 years, through the college's 1985 incorporation into the University of Greenwich.[2] Her works in mathematics and the history of mathematics include a translation of a book on algebra by Thomas Harriot, originally published in 1631, a few years after Harriot's death. Co-editor Robert Goulding provided the translation, while Seltman was responsible for the book's detailed commentary on Harriot's work,[6] with both translation and commentary based on a master's thesis she wrote at University College London, A Commentary on the Artis Analyticae Praxis of Thomas Harriot (1972).[7] She also completed a PhD at University College London, with the dissertation Descartes's "Regulae ad directionem ingenii": a case-study in the emergence of early modern algebra (1987).[8]

Although of Jewish descent, she became a nontheist Quaker, and despite her early experiences continued to describe herself as a Marxist.[9] She died on 2 December 2019.[1]

Books

Seltman's books include:

  • Piaget's Logic: A Critique of Genetic Epistemology (with Peter Seltman, George Allen & Unwin, 1985)[10]
  • Thomas Harriot's Artis Analyticae Praxis: An English Translation with Commentary (edited with Robert Goulding, Springer, 2007)[6]
  • What's Left? What's Right?: A Political Journey via North Korea and the Chinese Cultural Revolution (Dorrance Publishing, 2010)[2][4]
  • Bread and Roses: Nontheism and the Human Spirit (Matador, 2013)[2]
  • The Changing Faces of Antisemitism (Matador, 2015)
  • Rescuing God From Religion (Matador, 2016)[11]
  • Rescuing Jesus from Christianity (Matador, 2018)
  • Marx the Humanist (Troubador, 2019)

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Commemorating Muriel Seltman, Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, December 2019, https://www.ex-muslim.org.uk/2019/12/muriel-seltman, retrieved 2021-06-12 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Chaffers, Eloise (June 2013), "Taking a break from algebraic symbolism, 86 year old Muriel Seltman has written a book on nontheism", SEnine: 18, https://issuu.com/senine/docs/june_2013_issue_web_edition 
  3. ↑ See What's Left? What's Right?, p. 23
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Coyle, Kenny (June 29, 2014), "Voyage of disillusion in search for political purity (review of What's Left? What's Right?)", Morning Star, https://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-59a9-voyage-of-disillusion-in-search-for-political-purity 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Owen, Lara (May 19, 2016) (in zh), 九旬英国共产党：我是怎样卷入中国文革的?, BBC, https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp/china/2016/05/160519_cultural_revolution_experience_muriel_seltman 
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Reviews of Thomas Harriot's Artis Analyticae Praxis:
  7. ↑ See Thomas Harriot's Artis Analyticae Praxis, front matter, page v, and the references of "Rob'd of glories: the posthumous misfortunes of Thomas Harriot and his algebra", Archive for History of Exact Sciences 54 (6): 455–497, June 2000 
  8. ↑ WorldCat catalog entry for Descartes's "Regulae ad directionem ingenii" : a case-study in the emergence of early modern algebra, retrieved 2021-06-12
  9. ↑ Seltman, Muriel (17 January 2019), "Quaker and Marxist?", The Friend, https://thefriend.org/article/quaker-and-marxist 
  10. ↑ Reviews of Piaget's Logic:
    • Kitchener, Richard F. (June 1991), "none", British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 42 (2): 285–290, doi:10.1093/bjps/42.2.285 
    • Spiro, Avron (January 1986), "Making sense of Piaget's critics", The Review of Education 12 (1): 25–29, doi:10.1080/0098559860120106 
  11. ↑ Review of Rescuing God From Religion:




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