History
Mathematical enrichment activities in the United States have been around for at least thirty years, in the form of residential summer programs, math contests, and local school-based programs. The concept of a math circle, on the other hand, with its emphasis on convening professional mathematicians and secondary school students on a regular basis to solve problems, has appeared only within the past twelve years. This form of mathematical outreach made its way to the U.S. most directly from Russia and Bulgaria, where it has been a fixture of their mathematical culture for decades. (The first ones appeared in Russia during the 1930s; they have existed in Bulgaria for a century.) The tradition arrived with emigres who had received their inspiration from math circles as teenagers. Many of them successfully climbed the academic ladder to secure positions within universities, and a few pioneers among them decided to initiate math circles within their communities to preserve the tradition which had been so pivotal in their own formation as mathematicians.
Read more about this topic: Math Circle
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of this country was made largely by people who wanted to be left alone. Those who could not thrive when left to themselves never felt at ease in America.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“Every member of the family of the future will be a producer of some kind and in some degree. The only one who will have the right of exemption will be the mother ...”
—Ruth C. D. Havens, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)