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I am studying views of rationality as defined and lived in several generations of an English family that includes as major characters: the mathematician, Augustus De Morgan; his spiritualist wife, Sophia De Morgan; and Sophia's father, the radical Unitarian William Frend. The story of this family entails a complex narrative of knowing and believing lived through 100 years of English history.
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Joan Richards earned a PhD in the History of Science from Harvard in 1981. Her first book—Mathematical Visions: Non-Euclidean Geometry in Victorian England—focused on the reception of a geometrical theory in the wider culture of nineteenth century England. Her second book—Angles of Reflection—was at once a memoir and an exploration of the logical work and family life of Augustus De Morgan. She is currently writing a two-generational family history focusing on changing views of rationality in the Frend/De Morgan family. All of these projects—as well as her many mathematical historical articles—are linked by an abiding interest in the ways that mathematics has served as a model of thinking that has developed in interaction with other approaches to the human mind, be they psychological, spiritual, physical, or even phrenological.
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