Publications
Publications and Selected Offprints
”The Birth of Modern Cosmology,” CMS Notes 55 No. 2 (2023), 6 pages
Review of Giora H. Hon and Bernard R. Goldstein's "Maxwell's role in turning the concept of model into the methodology of modeling,” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 88 (2021) 321-333, in Mathematical Reviews 2023, MR4466837
”Canonical transformations from Jacobi to Whittaker” Archive for History of Exact Sciences Published online 31 January 2023
With Nichole Levesley, review of James Peebles' Cosmology's Century: An Inside History of Our Modern Understanding of the Universe,” (Princeton University Press, 2020) in CSHPM/SCHPM Bulletin 70 (May 2022) 13-14
”Vesto Slipher, nebular spectroscopy, and the birth of modern cosmology, 1912–22,” HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 12 (2022),146-169
“Theoretical Cosmology and Observational Astronomy, Circa 1930,” in Mathematics in the Physical Sciences, 1650-2000, Ed. Niccolo Guicciardini et al., pp. 31-34. Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach Report No. 56 (2005)
The Cosmos: A Historical Perspective ( Greenwood Publishers, 2006)
Review of Luca Guzzardi's Ruggiero Boscovich Theory of Natural Philosophy: Points, Distances, Determinations,” (Birkhauser/Springer, 2020), in Mathematical Reviews 2021, MR4233186
Review of Andrea Del Centina and Alessandra Fiocca, “Boscovich's geometrical principle of continuity, and the "mysteries of the infinity'',” ”Historia Mathematica 45 (2018), 131–175. in Mathematical Reviews 2019 MR3802554
With Andrew Schroter, "Euler and analysis: case studies and historiographical perspectives,” in Niccolò Guicciardini (Ed.), Anachronisms in the History of Mathematics: Essays on the Historical Interpretation of Mathematical Texts (Cambridge University Press, 2021)
”Mathematics in Library and Review Classification Systems: An Historical Overview,” Knowledge Organization 47 (2020) 334-356
”Mathematics in Library Subject Classification Systems,” Research in History and Philosophy of Mathematics: The CSHPM 2016 Annual Meeting in Calgary, Alberta Birkhaeuser, pp. 181-197. 2017.
Review of J. B. Shank's Before Voltaire: The French Origins of “Newtonian” Mechanics, 1680–1715,” (University of Chicago Press, 2018) in The Journal of Modern History 92 (2020) 197-198
”Edmund Husserl’s Contributions to the Second Variation in the Calculus of Variations,” in Alberto Cogliati (Ed.), Serva di due padroni. Saggi di storia della mathematica in onore di Umberto Bottazzini (Egea, 2019)
”Off the Shelf: Concepts of the Calculus,” Bulletin of the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Mathematics No. 64 May 2019, pp. 17-19
”Past, Present, and Anachronism in the Historiography of Mathematics,” CMS Notes 51 No. 3 (2019), 16-17
”Anachronism(s) in the History of Mathematics,” Bulletin of the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Mathematics 63 (2018), 21-24
”The Culture of Research Mathematics in 1860s Prussia: Adolph Mayer and the Theory of the Second Variation in the Calculus of Variations,” Research in History and Philosophy of Mathematics: The CSHPM 2017 Annual Meeting in Toronto, Ontario Birkhaeuser, pp. 121-140. 2018.
”Nonstandard Analysis, Analysis and the History of Calculus,” in David Rowe and Wann-Sheng Horng (Eds.), A Delicate Balance: Global Perspectives on Innovation and Tradition in the History of Mathematics A Festschrift in Honor of Joseph W. Dauben Birkhaeuser, pp. 25-49. 2015.
Introduction to Ernst Zermelo's 1894 doctoral dissertation and to two papers by Zermelo on the navigation prolem. In Ernst Zermelo - Collected Works/Gesammelte Werke: Volume II/Band II - Calculus of Variations, Applied Mathematics, and Physics/Variationsrechnung. Springer: Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften. Heniz-Dieter Ebbinghaus et al. (Eds.). 2013.
“Calculus of variations,” article for Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit 1450-1850 (Ed. Friedrich Steinle, Metzler Verlag, Stuttgart). 2013.
Sufficient condition, fields and the calculus of variations,” Historia Mathematica 36 (2009), pp. 420-427
“Cauchy,” in the New Dictionary of Scientific Biography Volume 2, pp. 75-79 (Scribners and Sons, 2008)
The Cosmos: A Historical Perspective ( Greenwood Publishers, 2006)
“Joseph Louis Lagrange,Théorie des fonctions analytiques," in Landmark Writings in Western Mathematics 1640-1940, pp. 208-224. Ed. Ivor Grattan-Guinness. (Elsevier, 2005)
“1744 Leonhard Euler's 1744 book on the calculus of variations,”in Landmark Writings in Western Mathematics 1640-1940, pp. 168-180. Ed. I. Grattan-Guinness. 2005, Elsevier
"The Early History of Hamilton-Jacobi Theory," Centaurus 44 (2003), 161-227. With Michiyo Nakane.
"History of Mathematics in the Eighteenth Century", in Roy Porter (Ed.), The Cambridge History of Science Volume 4 Eighteenth-Century Science (2003), 305-327
“Calculo delle variazioni,”in Storia della scienza, editor-in-chief Sandro Petruccioli, Roma, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, V. 7, 2003, pp. 69-75
“La meccanica celeste dopo Laplace: la teoria di Hamilton-Jacobi,” in Storia della scienza, editor-in-chief Sandro Petruccioli, Roma, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, V. 7, 2003, pp. 234-243. With Michiyo Nakane.
“Meccanica dei continui e dei sistemi descreti,” in Storia della scienza, editor-in-chief Sandro Petruccioli, Roma, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, V. 7, 2003, pp. 326-334
“The Calculus of Variations: A Historical Survey,” in A History of Analysis, Ed. H. N. Jahnke, (American Mathematical Society, 2003), pp. 355-384.
“The Writing of the History of Mathematics in Canada,” in J. W. Dauben and C. J. Scriba (Eds.), Writing the History of Mathematics: Its Historical Development (Birkhaeuser, 2003), pp. 285-288
"Mathematics," in History of Modern Science and Mathematics Volume 1, Ed. Brain Baigrie, pp. 84-114 (Scribners, 2002)
"Astronomy and Cosmology: Twentieth Century," in The History of Modern Science and Mathematics Volume 2 , Ed. Brian Baigrie, pp. (Scribners, 2002)
“Field Theory in the Calculus of Variations and the Hamilton-Jacobi Theory: A Case Study in the Interaction of Pure and Applied Mathematics," in The Growth of Mathematical Knowledge, in Kluwer's Synthese Library, ed. E. Grosholz and H. Breger (Kluwer, 2000), pp. 93-101
Essay review of Paolo Mancosu's Philosophy of Mathematics and Mathematical Practice in the Eighteenth Century (1996), in Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic V. 40 (1999), 447-454
"Die Genese der Variationsrechnung," in Geschichte der Analysis, Hrsg. Hans Niels Jahnke, pp. 449-486 (Spektrum Akademischer Verlag: Heidelberg, Berlin, 1999). In the series "Texte zur Didaktik der Mathematik"
Calculus and Analytical Mechanics in the Age of Enlightenment (Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 1997)
"The Genesis and Early Development of Euler's Analysis", in Analysis and Synthesis in Mathematics: History and Philosophy, Eds. Marco Panza and Michael Otte, pp. 47-78. (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997)
"Jacobi's result (1837) in the calculus of variations and its reformulation by Otto Hesse (1857). A study in the changing interpretation of mathematical theorems". In History of mathematics and education, Ed. H. N Jahnke and N. Knoche. Volume 11 of the series "Studien zur Wissenschafts-, Sozial und Bildungsgeschichte der Mathematik". 1996. Vandenhoeck. Göttingen
Preface to J. L. Lagrange, Analytical Mechanics (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996) vii-x
"The concept of elastic stress in eighteenth-century mechanics: Some examples from Euler", in Hamiltonian Dynamical Systems History, Theory and Applications. Eds. H. S. Dumas et al. Volume 63 in the "IMA Volumes in Mathematics and Applications" (Springer, 1995), pp.1-14
"The origins of Euler's variational calculus", Archive for History of Exact Sciences 47 (1994), 103-141
"Calculus of Variations", "Classical Mechanics", articles for Companion Encyclopedia of the History and Philosophy of the Mathematical Sciences, Ed. I. Grattan-Guinness, (Routledge, 1994), V.1, pp. 342-350; V.2, pp. 971-986
"Isoperimetric Problems in the Variational Calculus of Euler and Lagrange," Historia Mathematica 19 (1992), 4-23
"Mathematical Technique and Physical Conception in Euler's Investigation of the Elastica," in Centaurus 34 (1991), 24-60
"Lagrange's Analytical Mathematics, Its Cartesian Origins and Reception in Comte's Positive Philosophy," Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 21 (1990), 243-256
"History of Mathematics in the 17th and 18th Centuries," Encyclopedia Britannica V.23 (1990): 616-623
"The Calculus as Algebraic Analysis: Some Observations on Mathematical Analysis in the 18th Century," Archive for History of Exact Sciences 39 (1989), 317-335
"Joseph Louis Lagrange's Algebraic Vision of the Calculus," Historia Mathematica 14 (1987), 38-53
"J.L. Lagrange's Changing Approach to the Foundations of the Calculus of Variations," Archive for History of Exact Sciences 32, (1985), 151-191
"D'Alembert's Principle: The Original Formulation and Application in Jean D'Alembert's Traité de Dynamique (1743) Part 1" Centaurus 28 (1985), 31-61
"D'Alembert's Principle: The Original Formulation and Application in Jean D'Alembert's TraitŽ de Dynamique (1743) Part 2" Centaurus 28 (1985), 145-159
Essay review of J.T. Cannon and S. Dostrovsky's The Evolution of Dynamics: Vibration Theory 1687-1742, in Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 9 (1983):107-111
"J.L. Lagrange's Early Contributions to the Principles and Methods of Mechanics," Archive for History of Exact Sciences 28, (1983), 197-241