Ivor Grattan-Guinness

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Ivor Owen Grattan-Guinness (23 June 1941 – 12 December 2014) was an English historian of mathematics and logic. He was born in Bakewell, England, where his father was a math teacher. He studied at Wadham College, Oxford, earning a Mathematics degree, then completed an MSc in Mathematical Logic and the Philosophy of Science at the London School of Economics in 1966. He earned a PhD in 1969 and a Doctor of Science in 1978 in the History of Science from the University of London.

Grattan-Guinness spent much of his career at Middlesex University as Emeritus Professor of the History of Mathematics and Logic. He was also a Visiting Research Associate at the London School of Economics. He received the Kenneth O. May Medal in 2009 for his services to the history of mathematics and became an Honorary Member of the Bertrand Russell Society in 2010. He was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and a member of the International Academy of the History of Science.

In the world of publishing, he edited the Annals of Science (1974–1981) and founded the History and Philosophy of Logic journal (1979–1992). He was an associate editor of Historia Mathematica for many years and helped with editions of the writings of C.S. Peirce and Bertrand Russell. He gave more than 570 invited lectures in over 20 countries.

Grattan-Guinness also held leadership roles, serving as President of the British Society for the History of Mathematics (1986–1988) and later as Vice-President (1992). He was elected an effective member of the Académie Internationale d'Histoire des Sciences in 1991 and helped edit the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography for mathematicians and statisticians in 2004. His research covered the development of calculus, mathematical analysis, mechanics, mathematical physics, set theory, and logic. He emphasized understanding past thinkers on their own terms and noted that ignorance can play a role in how we know things.

He was interested in coincidences and wrote about them for the Society for Psychical Research. He enjoyed the number 225 (IGG225) as a personal motif. Grattan-Guinness died of heart failure at age 73, survived by his wife, Enid Grattan-Guinness. His personal papers are held at the Archives of American Mathematics, and his offprints at the American Institute of Mathematics.