Robert McNees
Did you know that a famous math reference – most physicists of a certain age have a copy – is the result of a New Deal project to employ scientists and mathematicians?
Mathematician Irene Stegun was born #OTD in 1919. A major contributor to the Works Progress Administration’s Mathematical Tables Project, she’s probably best known as co-author of the classic “A Handbook of Mathematical Functions” — usually referred to as “Abramowitz and Stegun.”
Robert McNees
Almost everyone in physics, astro, and applied math has a copy of this book somewhere on their physical or digital shelf, or else they've used resources descended from it.
It grew out of a Works Progress Administration project employing clerks, physicists, and mathematicians who couldn’t find work after the Great Depression!
Robert McNees
Milton Abramowitz, Stegun’s co-editor on the project, died of a heart attack in 1958. That was after the book was underway but several years before it was finished. Stegun took over and saw the project through to its publication in 1964.
"Stegun and Abramowitz" may be more appropriate.
In 2010 the digital successor to Stegun & Abramowitz went online, when NIST published the “Digital Library of Mathematical Functions.”
https://dlmf.nist.gov
Robert McNees
Anyway, because Stegun & Abramowitz was produced by US government employees as part of a publicly funded project, anyone can make a copy of it.
Dover famously reprinted it — that’s the copy most of us own.
Robert McNees
The book is the result of “work for hire by the US government,” so it is not eligible for copyright and can be freely distributed.
There are many sites that host pdf scans of the book if you’d like a copy of your own to keep on hand.
Schamschula
@mcnees I have the hard copy!
John Carlos Baez
@mcnees - wow, I didn't know that! I have that book, and love it. Just seeing the cover provokes a Pavlovian response.
Robert McNees
@johncarlosbaez Yeah, I was very surprised. It had never occurred to me that the WPA would have programs for mathematicians and scientists like the ones they had for artists.
Robert McNees
@stargazersmith I think they were separate projects focused on different areas, but it’s a good question! I’ll look in my grandpa’s copies tomorrow to see if there’s any mention.
Larry Smith For Harris
@mcnees
Did Irene's list of functions have anything to do with the Chemical Rubber Company (CRC) math functions book? It was invaluable to me as an undergraduate in learning vector math and spherical geometry.
Robert McNees
@sophiehuiberts yes! I haven’t read it, but I did read a jstor article that I think he wrote while researching the book. I had to do a quick google to make sure it wasn’t the David Alan Grier who was on “In Living Color.”
Sophie Huiberts
@mcnees There is a really nice book about the mathematical tables project and computers more broadly, When computers were human by David Alan Grier.
Ian Tregillis
@mcnees That's the copy I have, a blue and green Dover edition. And I do use it. Not every day, but more than once I've blundered my way into some crucial special function that I knew jack squat about.
Robert McNees
@ITregillis I tend to use the DLMF now, but the ol’ reliable Dover edition has saved me on more than one occasion.
Robert McNees
It goes without saying that we should have a prestige TV adaptation of the WPA project to create a reliable and high-quality handbook of mathematical functions, formulas, graphs, and tables.
Robert McNees
@artologica Well obviously I am willing to serve.
But also, there's a mathematician named David Alan Grier who has written extensively about Stegun and the other folks involved in the program (including the many women working as applied mathematicians, a field so loosely organized at the time that sexism was not as effective a barrier to entry as elsewhere).
Pair mathematician David Alan Grier with comedian David Alan Grier from "In Living Color." Have them both work on it.
Michele Banks
@mcnees any ideas who HBO/Netflix should hire to be their technical expert?
Ian Tregillis
@mcnees I get it. Most of the time, Mathematica is right there, but once in a while I still like to pull out Gradshteyn & Ryzhik.
Megan Lynch (she/her)
@mcnees There's SO MUCH good that came out of the New Deal, including the WPA.
The rich hated FDR so much they have put billions into convincing USians that all these things were bad and that government should instead "be run like a business".
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