British left-wing activist, mathematics educator, historian of mathematics, and author
Muriel Seltman (néeBarnett; 27 March 1927 – 2 December 2019)[1] was a 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][4] and met her husband there.[5] They joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1952,[6] but by the early 1960s had been expelled from the party for their anti-revisionism (sympathy for Maoism and opposition to the Khrushchev Thaw).[5] They traveled with their son to North Korea,[6] where Seltman worked as a teacher, but, bored with the North Korean cult of personality and their life there,[5] left for China in 1965, just in time for the Cultural Revolution. Disillusioned, they returned to England in 1966,[6] and Seltman later wrote a book What's Left? What's Right? describing her experiences.[5]
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,[7] 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).[8] 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).[9]
Although of Jewish descent, she became a nontheist Quaker, and despite her early experiences continued to describe herself as a Marxist.[10] 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)[11]
Thomas Harriot's Artis Analyticae Praxis: An English Translation with Commentary (edited with Robert Goulding, Springer, 2007)[7]
What's Left? What's Right?: A Political Journey via North Korea and the Chinese Cultural Revolution (Dorrance Publishing, 2010)[2][5]
Bread and Roses: Nontheism and the Human Spirit (Matador, 2013)[2]
The Changing Faces of Antisemitism (Matador, 2015)
^See Thomas Harriot's Artis Analyticae Praxis, front matter, page v, and the references of Stedall, Jacqueline A. (June 2000), "Rob'd of glories: the posthumous misfortunes of Thomas Harriot and his algebra", Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 54 (6): 455–497, doi:10.1007/s004070050041, JSTOR41134093, S2CID123490351
