Inventory as a Route to Understanding: Sarton,Neugebauer,and Sources

The following abbreviations are used in the notes:.

CIW: Archives of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

DSB: Dictionary of scientific biography, ed. by Gillispie Charles C. (16 vols, New York, 1970–80).

HGS: Papers of George Sarton, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

NYPL: Correspondence of George Sarton and Mabel Elwes Sarton, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

PBA: Archives of Brown University, Providence.

PIAS: Archives of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.

YMS: Papers of May Sarton, York, Maine.

I thank archival administrators for permission to cite from their holdings.

Pyenson Lewis , “Prerogatives of European intellect: Historians of science and the promotion of Western civilization”, History of science, xxxi (1993), 289–315.

Swerdlow Noel M. , “Montucla's legacy: The history of the exact sciences”, Journal of the history of ideas, liv (1993), 299–328.

José M^a. Piñero López , “Las etapas iniciales de la historiografía de la ciencia: Invitación a recuperar su internacionalidad y su integración”, Arbor, cxliii, nos. 558/559/560 (1992), 21–67, for a learned and exhaustive review.

We have recently seen something of this equilibrium in the power of key-word searches of on-line data bases, although it is doubtful if this technique may serve for innovative categories. Travitsky Betty S. , “The online database: A useful tool for interdisciplinary study?”, American Council of Learned Societies, Newsletter, iv (n.s.), no. 1 (1993), 7–10.

Sheets-Pyenson Susan , “New directions for scientific biography: The case of Sir William Dawson”, History of science, xxviii (1990), 399–410.

Biographical details from May Sarton's I knew a phoenix (New York, 1959), A world of light (New York, 1976), and “Looking back at my father”, in Family portraits: Remembrances by twenty distinguished writers (New York, 1989), 189–203; Merton Robert K. Thackray's Arnold , “On discipline building: The paradoxes of George Sarton”, Isis, lxiii (1972), 473–95 and their entry in the DSB; George Sarton's “Eleanor Mabel Elwes (EME): The adventures of a scholar's wife” (1952) in YMS; and conversations with May Sarton. Among other useful treatments are: George Sarton's European roots: Introduction to his life and times , ed. by der Meersch A. M. Simon-Van (Ghent, 1984); Sayili Aydin , “George Sarton and the history of science”, Kurumu Türk Tarih , Belleten , xlvii (1983), 499–525. The astronomical offer came in 1910, when he was called to the Brussels Obervatory's meridian service. In addition to lodging with heat and lighting, he was offered a salary of 2000 Fr per year, and his duties were reduced to a “strict minimum” pending his doctoral defence. YGS, Georges Lecointe to George Sarton, 17 May 1910, with attached Lecointe to [?] Pelseneer, 17 May 1910. Sarton's plea to be considered for a lectureship in Sarton to Director General (of the preparatory school attached to the University of Ghent), 14 Mar 1912. Sarton gives £200 per year as his income in 1912 (“Eleanor Mabel Elwes”, 84), a figure he also reports as 5000 Fr in the New Yorker, 29 Nov 1952, 32.

Sarton , “Eleanor Mabel Elwes”, 102. The verso of identity documents of Sarton and his wife, obtained in October 1914, features endorsement by both Dutch and Spanish consuls. A prefatory note in NYPL indicates the provenance of Sarton's correspondence with his wife.

YMS. On 21 October 1914 Sarton arrived in England with 470 Fr (£18 10s.) in liquid assets. Three days later he received £7 from his wife's relatives, an amount he gave directly to Mabel. Mabel's first cousin was General Sir George D. Barker, g.c.b.; Sarton obtained a letter of recommendation from his widow when he volunteered as a translator to the British army. Sarton to Guy Eden, n.d. (reply declining the offer: R. Page to Sarton, 3 Jan 1915). NYPL, for correspondence between George Sarton (in London) and Mabel Sarton (in Ipswich) during July 1914.

Pyenson Lewis , “What is the good of history of science?”, History of science, xxvii (1989), 353–89, p. 363. Sarton estimated that his family were among 110,000 Belgian refugees in England. YMS, Sarton, draft of a letter to the New York Times, 11 Oct 1915.

YMS, Sarton , “Notes written in answer to Dr Kidder's request of Sept. 4 (?), 1930”, where Sarton notes the end of his income as the reason for leaving Belgium; unpublished letter to the New York Times, 11 Oct 1915, where Sarton emphasizes: “It is not so much the well-to-do people who left Belgium, as all the people — Rich or not — Whose regular income or salary was cut off, and who could not live without it, and first of all, all the literary people and the artists.” CIW, Sarton to Robert Simpson Woodward, 26 Sep 1914, for mention of an “annual grant (small indeed)” from the Belgian government.

YMS. Colonel Grunry [?] (Headquarters of the Belgian Army in Le Havre) to Sarton, 19 Nov [?] 1914; Page R. (War Office, London) to Sarton, 3 Jan 1915.

YMS. George Sarton, diary entry, 13 Nov 1914.

Ibid.

YMS. George Sarton Mabel , “Letter from Belgium: The basis of peace”, acknowledged and rejected by Hamilton Holt, editor of the New York Independent, on 8 Oct 1914.

YMS. Sarton to Miss H. Shadd, 18 Feb 1916. In A world of light, 60, May Sarton writes that the prospective business partner was a black woman.

Sarton , “Eleanor Mabel Elwes”, 75; YMS, George L. Streeter to George Sarton, 23 Jan 1926, for an analysis of one embryological specimen.

Sarton May , A world of light, 33. Nearly forty years of repressed anger, May Sarton thinks, led to Mabel's fatal illness, breast cancer.

NYPL, George Sarton to Mabel Sarton, 26 Apr 1915, where he describes the inspiration; 27 Apr 1915, for Sarton's determination to take out a patent even though it would cost more than $100; 2 Apr 1915 (misdated for 2 May 1915), where Sarton reports that the meter is already patented. YMS, Sarton George , “Design for the construction of an electric energy meter calculated to measure the energy used during different parts of the day”, 25 Apr 1915. Sarton sent the proposal to the historian of mathematics David Eugene Smith, who returned an encouraging line. HGS, Smith to Sarton, 29 Apr 1915.

Sarton May , “Looking back”, 194–5; Sarton , “Eleanor Mabel Elwes”, 76: “To this day I discover shortcomings in myself and forms of gaucherie which could be traced back to my lack of education in childhood.”.

Sarton , “Eleanor Mabel Elwes”. Sarton recalls: “I was left alone and abandonned intrusted [sic] to the care of servants. Except for the little help which I received from my grandparents, and from aunts and uncles, I had practically no familial education” (p. 57). Sarton followed his father's model of parental neglect: “I imitated his example (or rather did naturally what he had done) and was myself an indifferent father bothering relatively little about my offspring” (pp. 60 bis bis and 60 ter). His daughter came as a revelation: “I had grown up without any clear idea of what a mother was and now suddenly I saw a Mother, my beloved wife, looking after our child” (p. 77).

Ibid., 73.

Sarton May , A world of light , 60, 62; Sarton Mabel to Sarton May , 3 Sep 1917, in Sarton Eleanor Mabel , Letters to May, ed. by Sarton May (Orono, Maine, 1986), 2.

Sarton May , A world of light, 45, for L. J. Henderson's criticism of Sarton's “sentimental self-indulgences”.

Sarton writes to Irénée van der Ghinst on 11 Mar 1915, just before leaving England for New York, that he is taking with him “a rather large sum of money: $50”. Elkhadem H. , “George Sarton: Ses années de formation et ses réalisations académiques à travers sa correspondance avec Irénée van der Ghinst”, Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Klasse der Wetenschappen, Academiae analecta, xlvii (1985), 103–25, p. 119.

NYPL. George Sarton to Mabel Sarton, 8 Apr 1915, for Smith's kindness; 11 Apr 1915 for the appointment in George Washington University, at $1200 for the year; 10 Jun 1915, for Smith's efforts to raise $25,000 for a lectureship for Sarton at Columbia University; 13 Aug 1915 for the Belgian Scholarship Committee's fund-raising. Elkadem , “George Sarton”, 119–20 for the Committee.

NYPL. George Sarton to Mabel Sarton, 25 Jun 1915, where the University of Illinois will pay $400 for seven weeks' teaching; 20 Jul 1915 for the quotation.

NYPL. George Sarton to Mabel Sarton, 10 Jun 1915, where Sarton indicates that he has written to a friend in England, asking if she could take May for an unlimited time; Sarton Mabel to Sarton George , 11 Jun 1915, reacting to the friend's offer and categorically refusing to part with May.

NYPL. Mabel Sarton to George Sarton, 20 Jul 1915, for the Swiss invitation; Sarton George to Sarton Mabel , 27 Jul 1915, where Sarton promises $60 per month if she chooses Switzerland.

HGS. Smith to Sarton, 5 Feb 1917 and 21 May 1917.

YMS. Sarton's notes for an autobiography, n.d.

CIW. Sarton to Woodward, 26 Sep 1914, and his more urgent pleas from England of 25 Oct 1914 and 1 Nov 1914, asking for help in obtaining a lectureship in the United States.

DSB, s. v. “Sarton” and “Henderson”.

Bentinck-Smith William , Building a great library: The Coolidge years at Harvard (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), especially pp. 54–103.

YMS, Sarton George , “Lettres au petit journal”, page in a diary where Sarton gives the datelines for letters sent to the Paris publication, Le petit journal, which had appointed him a correspondent. NYPL, George Sarton to Mabel Sarton, 20 July 1915, where Sarton finally receives 400 Fr for his letters.

Miksa Francis , The development of classification at the Library of Congress (University of Illinois, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Occasional Papers, 164; Urbana, 1984), 16–40. The decision to follow Washington's lead was to some extent a homecoming, since in the first decade of the twentieth century the Library of Congress had decided to borrow heavily from the flexible classification system devised by the sometime Harvard librarian Charles Ammi Cutter in the 1870s and 1880s.

Ibid., 39, 43, according to which the Library of Congress catalogued or recatalogued 1,169,200 volumes in 1903–10 and 1,059,300 volumes in 1911–21.

Bentinck-Smith , Great library, 37–49.

HGS. Waxweiler to Sarton, 25 Apr 1910. Waxweiler was also unsympathetic to Sarton's early inquiries about a career in history of science. Waxweiler to Sarton, 6 Dec 1910. Sarton and Waxweiler discussed socialist manifestos in 1906. Elkhadem , “George Sarton”, 110.

HGS. David Eugene Smith to Sarton, 4 Dec 1923, Sarton's copy of a circular letter promoting the notion of the society.

Bethesda , National Library of Medicine, History of Medicine Division, Fielding Garrison Papers. Streeter to Garrison, 9 Apr 1920.

YMS. Sarton, “L'uniformisation des formats” (1914).

HGS, Ostwald to Sarton, 12 Dec 1913 and 22 Dec 1913. Sarton received Ostwald's opinions with scepticism. During the summer of 1915 he looked forward to meeting Melvil Dewey. NYPL, George Sarton to Mabel Sarton, 27 Jul 1915. John P. Comaromi and M. P. Satija have observed that “non-American subjects have not got adequate or even due representation” in the Dewey classification system. Comaromi Satija , Dewey decimal classification: History and current status (New York, 1990), 32.

Unsigned note in Bibliographe moderne, xviii (1916/17), 109, transcribed and sent to Sarton by Arnold C. Klebs as an appendix to a letter of Easter Sunday 1920 (HGS); Klebs attributes the note to Stein, the journal's editor.

HGS. Klebs to Sarton, Easter Sunday 1920. Fifteen years later Klebs wrote that Sarton's plan for the encyclopedia on cards was one of the foundations of “the scientific method of bibliography”. Klebs to Sarton , 10 Feb 1935.

HGS. Gandz to Sarton, 22 Feb 1935: “Have you ever given thought to the plan of a Union Catalog on cards for the special collection of History of Science, which would be subdivided according to subjects and authors. It seems to me that this would be the logical continuation of your Introduction and Isis, which, in a sense, laid the foundation for the plan.”.

YMS. Exhibit in honor of George Sarton displayed during December 1952 at the Armed Forces Medical Library, Washington, D.C. (unpaginated, mimeographed guide), 5. The Isis cumulative bibliographies — Indispensable for serious scholarship in our discipline — Realize this goal of Sarton's.

YMS. Sarton, “An institute for the history of science”, accompanying circular letter of 2 Oct 1917.

Cohen I. Bernard , “Introduction: The impact of the Merton thesis”, in Cohen (ed.), Puritanism and the rise of modern science: The Merton thesis (New Brunswick, 1990), 1–111, evaluation on p. 31.

YMS. Sarton, diary entry of 27 Nov 1914.

Sarton to van der Ghinst Irénée , 1915, in George Sarton's European roots (ref. 6), 9.

YMS, Sarton, extracts from his journals, quotation dated before 19 Sep 1915. But cf. NYPL, Sarton George to Sarton Mabel , 7 Jul 1915 and 13 Jul 1915, where Sarton at first deprecates the library at the University of Illinois and then emphasizes: “There is a splendid library — Very efficiently organized.”.

YMS. Sarton , “Autobiographical sketch prepared at the request of Herr Prof. Dr. Abderhalden, President of the Kaiserl. Leop. Carol. Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher on August 25, 1935“.

Sarton May , A world of light, 37.

YMS. Sarton's notes for an autobiography, n. d.

CIW. Sarton to Woodward, 11 Nov 1918.

Swerdlow Noel , “Otto E. Neugebauer (26 May 1899–19 February 1990)”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society , cxxxvii (1993), 139–65. I am greatly indebted to Swerdlow's sensitive éloge. Swerdlow is silent about the origin of Neugebauer's attraction to ancient mathematics (beyond mentioning that Neugebauer's father was a connoisseur of Oriental carpets), and in his own most introspective piece, Neugebauer provides no clues. Neugebauer , Reminiscences on the Göttingen Mathematical Institute on the occasion of R. Courant's 75th birthday (n. p., 1963), 9-page typescript in the Historical Library, PIAS. Dr G. Neugebauer (California Institute of Technology, Pasadena) indicates in a letter to me of 5 May 1994 that his grandfather was “an engineer running a railroad maintenance yard”. Essential for any study of Neugebauer is his annotated collection of his own reprints, kept in the Rosenwald Collection at the Historical Library of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.

PIAS, “General Files, Sa-Sc”. Neugebauer to Oswald Veblen, 12 Nov 1940, commenting on the collaboration of Federigo Enriques and Giorgio de Santillana, Storia del pensiero scientifico, I: Il mondo antico (Bologna, 1932).

PBA, “Tamarkin Papers”. Hille to Tamarkin, 25 Apr 1932.

Ibid., 27 Apr 1931.

Ibid., 23 May 1931.

Ibid., 29 May 1931.

Ibid. , 3 Aug. 1931, reproducing part of a letter of Neugebauer's; 27 Nov 1931, for quotation from Hille.

Ibid . 25 Apr 1932. Hille describes his tour of the Lütcke & Wulff printing establishment, guided by Wilhelm Johann Eugen Blaschke, ibid., 21 Dec 1932.

PIAS, “General Files: Richard Courant”. Courant to Flexner , 2 May 1933, where the two kinds of dismissal are described.

PIAS, “Oswald Veblen, 1933–34”. Veblen to Flexner Abraham , 11 Sep 1933, where Veblen describes his attempts of the preceding spring; ibid., 16 Jul 1933, for the ranking.

PIAS, “Members, Harald Bohr, 1947–48”. Bohr to Flexner Abraham , 9 Aug 1933, for the quotation; ibid., 9 Aug 1933, for the three-year position.

PIAS, “Frank Aydelotte”. Flexner to Aydelotte, 8 Sep 1933; PIAS, Veblen to Flexner, 4 May 1933, commenting on Neugebauer: “I believe it is quite true that he occupies a unique position as an historian of mathematics.”.

CIW. Jameson to John Campbell Merriam, 18 Oct 1922. Earlier, David Eugene Smith had discouraged Sarton from applying to Flexner for support in setting up an institute for history of science, as Flexner's “interests lie rather in other directions”. HGS, Smith to Sarton, 27 Nov 1916.

YMS. Two Shady Hill pamphlets from c. 1918.

PIAS, “Institute Organization, Flexner Correspondence”. Sarton to Flexner, 6 Sep 1933.

Ibid., Flexner to Sarton , 8 Sep 1933.

PIAS, “General Files: George Sarton”. Sarton to Flexner, 10 Sep 1933.

HGS. Neugebauer to Sarton, 16 Oct 1935.

PIAS, “Frank Aydelotte”. Flexner to Aydelotte, 14 Sep 1933.

PIAS, “Oswald Veblen, 1933–1934”. Veblen to Flexner, 11 Sep 1933.

PIAS, “General Files: Warren Weaver”. Weaver to Flexner, 25 Sep 1933 and 5 Oct 1933, conveying the terms of Neugebauer's appointment.

PBA, “Richardson/Neugebauer”. Neugebauer to Veblen, 4 Feb 1937, translated typescript.

PIAS, “Frank Aydelotte”. Veblen to Aydelotte, 22 Feb 1937.

PBA, “Richardson/Neugebauer”. Neugebauer to Veblen, 4 Feb 1937, translated typescript.

HGS. Neugebauer to Sarton, 25 Apr 1938.

Swerdlow , “Neugebauer”; Reingold Nathan , “Refugee mathematicians in the United States of America, 1933–1941: Reception and reaction” [1981], in Reingold , Science American style (New Brunswick, 1991), 249–83, on pp. 264–70, which is particularly good on the events of 1938 and 1939. A work dealing with related issues which I have not seen is Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze, “Das Ende des Jahrbuchs über die Fortschritte der Mathematik und die Brechung des deutschen Referatemonopols”, Mitteilungen der Mathematischen Gesellschaft der DDR, i (1984), 91–101.

PIAS, “General Files: Warren Weaver”. Flexner to Weaver, 17 Nov 1938.

Ibid., Weaver to Veblen, 21 Nov 1938.

Reingold , “Refugee mathematicians”, 253–4 for Richardson and Veblen.

HGS. Archibald, curriculum vilae, 1949.

PBA, “Tamarkin Papers”. Capen S. P. Eisenhart L. P. Ford G. S. , “Report of the Survey Committee on Brown University” (Sep 1930); undated three-page survey of graduate education in mathematics (probably 1930), for first quotation; [Richardson], “The future policy of the Graduate School” [1930], for second quotation.

Wriston Henry M. , Academic procession: Reflections of a college president (New York, 1959), 114.

PBA, “Richardson/Neugebauer”. Neugebauer to Archibald, 14 Dec 1938, typescript.

Ibid., Richardson (as dean) to Neugebauer, 20 Dec 1938; Wriston to Neugebauer , 20 Dec 1938; Richardson (as secretary of the American Mathematical Society) to Neugebauer, 20 Dec 1938.

Ibid., Neugebauer to Richardson , 2 Jan 1939.

Ibid., Neugebauer to Richardson , 6 Jun 1939.

PBA, “Mathematical reviews”. American Mathematical Society, Minutes of the Council, 6 Sep 1939.

Ibid. , Richardson to Neugebauer , 19 Jun 1939; Richardson Evans G. C. , “Report of the American Mathematical Society to the Carnegie Corporation of New York regarding Mathematical reviews, July 1940”. A lacunary history of the early years of Mathematical reviews is present in Everett Pitcher's A history of the second fifty years, American Mathematical Society, 1939–1988 (American Mathematical Society, Centenial Publications, 1; Providence, 1988), 69–80; Liliane Beaulieu is currently undertaking a large study of the founding of Mathematical reviews. Sarton wrote to Robert K. Merton on 19 November 1939: “The Rockefeller Foundation were willing to help Isis (and possibly Osiris). The Carnegie Institution — Which does not help me enough and will help me less — Obliged me to refuse the R.F.'s assistance. Poor mentality!” (courtesy of Dr Merton).

PBA, “Mathematical reviews”. Richardson to Warren Weaver, 8 Feb 1940, for the classification problem; Richardson Evans G. C. , “Report to the Rockefeller Foundation on a grant of $12,000 to the American Mathematical Society for Mathematical Reviews”, Jul 1940.

Ibid., Wilson Carroll L. to Tamarkin , 16 Jan 1940. On Bush's view that Sarton's work was useless, Sarton May , A world of light , 36. Sarton had only contempt for Bush: “The president of the Carnegie Institution, Vannevar Bush, a tough technician with no use whatsoever for history or the humanities has decided to close my department just as soon as I am obliged to retire (at 65). My work of thirty years, he considers, ‘irrelevant’, and the history of science is a luxury, which one cannot afford in hard times. His own opinions do not matter, but he is a man of considerable influence and power and there are many ‘Bushmen’ ready enough to follow him.” HGS, Sarton to Willy Hartner, 23 Dec 1946. On Bush's low-profile approach to administration: Goldberg Stanley , “Inventing a climate of opinion: Vannevar Bush and the decision to build the bomb”, Isis , lxxxiii (1992), 429–52; Reingold Nathan , “Vannevar Bush's new deal for research: Or the triumph of the old order”, Historical studies in the physical and biological sciences, xvii (1987), 299–344, p. 305 for Bush's confusion of science with technology.

PBA, “Mathematical Reviews”. Richardson to Weaver, 8 Feb 1940, Richardson's paraphrase of Tamarkin and Neugebauer's position.

Ibid., Neugebauer Tamarkin to Weaver Warren , 3 May 1940.

Ibid., Richardson Evans Griffith Conrad , “Report of the American Mathematical Society to the Carnegie Corporation of New York regarding Mathematical Reviews, July 1940”.

Ibid., Richardson to Wriston , 26 Jun 1941; Neugebauer to Wriston , 12 Jul 1941.

Ibid., Neugebauer to Wriston , 13 Nov 1941.

Pitcher , Second fifty years, 73, where the American Mathematical Society divested itself of selling photocopies and microfilms in 1947.

Hanlon John , “Architectural anachronism has a wizard in basement”, Providence evening bulletin, 11 May 1964.

HGS. Neugebauer to Sarton, 9 Oct 1954.

HGS. Neugebauer to Sarton, 3 Nov 1943.

HGS. Neugebauer to Sarton, 13 Jan 1956.

HGS. Neugebauer to Sarton, 17 Jan 1956. Sarton had criticized Bartel L. van der Waerden for not citing Cantor. Neugebauer defended the omission in an earlier letter. When Neugebauer wrote to Van der Waerden about his good deed, he referred to Sarton as “this great fool [Obertrottel]”. Zurich , Archives of the Eidgenössischen Technischen Hochschule, Neugebauer to Van der Waerden, 6 Jan 1956. I am grateful to Liliane Beaulieu for telling me about this letter. Neugebauer's published reply to Sarton, somewhat milder than his letters, is “A note of ingratitude”, Isis, xlvii (1956), 58.

HGS. Smith to Sarton, 19 Feb 1936.