Angles of Reflection: A Memoir of Logic and a Mother's Love [Hardcover]

Joan L. Richards (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2001

At the time her nine year old son was diagnosed with a brain tumour, Joan Richards was deeply involved in writing a book about the life and work of the 19th-century mathematician Augustus De Morgan. Immersed in this abstract, logical world of science, Richards was forced by her son's sudden illness to confront a different kind of reality, the irrational world of a serious family illness and its consequences. A memoir, "Angles of Reflection" portrays a woman deeply enmeshed in two male dominated worlds, 19th-century mathematics and 20th-century research academics struggling to integrate the competing demands of family and career without sacrificing one to the other. As the strain of caring for her sick child mounts, Richards' view of De Morgan broadens to include his family in ways that both illuminate his work and force her to re-evaluate her own career and relationships. In the process, she gives new meaning to the term "applied mathematics" by drawing life lessons from De Morgan's logic, Newton's absolute space and time, and Leibnitz's relative visions of reality.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Richards, a professor of the history of science at Brown, was looking forward to a long-anticipated sabbatical when her nine-year-old son developed a seizure disorder. Putting aside her own work, upon which her chance for a promotion rested, Richards saw Ned through successful brain surgery before resuming plans to bring her family to Berlin, where she had been granted a prestigious fellowship. Another medical emergency soon arose, however, and Richards spent the entire stay in Germany worried about Ned's increasingly complex prognosis and negotiating the labyrinthine medical system. These frustrations led her to question the validity of the Victorian models of thinking that were to have been the core of her research project. "My understanding was coming apart at the seams," she writes in this gripping memoir. "My experience was making me a traitor to [the] world where the public and private were sharply defined and not to be mixed. I had lost [Victorian scientists'] clear understanding of the real and the unreal." When Ned finally recovered, Richards produced not the expected scholarly study on 19th century probabilistic thought but this personal account of how her private experience deepened her understanding of her academic specialty. A gifted writer, Richards is at her best in describing her fears for her son and the conflicting demands of career and motherhood. Although it's surprising that she never really challenges the power structure that expects her to produce work at any cost, her memoir is an exceptionally articulate study of how we deal with what we cannot control. Agent, Sally Brady. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Mathematician and science historian Richards brings spirituality to mathematics and physics as she ponders the demands of motherhood and a career in a male-dominated field. She opens with a harrowing account of dealing with her nine-year-old son Ned's seizures and subsequent brain surgery shortly before she and both her sons moved to Germany, where she had a one-year fellowship. Her husband remained in the U.S., making theirs a long-distance marriage that was further strained by another medical catastrophe when Ned broke an elbow--a potentially crippling injury. She spent a frustrating year grappling with the German language and medical system. Besides reporting her harried year, she ponders the life and career of the Victorian mathematician Augustus DeMorgan as recounted in a memoir by his wife, Sophia. DeMorgan endured the death of his 16-year-old daughter, an experience that changed him and in which Richards sees sharp differences in the standards by which men and women are judged. A compelling story of balancing career and parenthood. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: W. H. Freeman (May 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0716794616
• ISBN-13: 978-0716794615
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,574,630 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Degrees of Knowledge, May 10, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Angles of Reflection: A Story of Motherhood and Mathematics (Hardcover)

"Angles of Reflection" is a both a well-told story and interesting examination of how we deal with uncertainty. The main story--that of a mother and son dealing with the boy's serious illnesses--is compelling and poignant. The account of the fears and frustrations that Joan Richards faces as she struggles to care for her son will resonate with anyone who has cared for a sick child. While the story is a sad one, the love and courage it illustrates makes it enjoyable and ultimately uplifting.

What makes this book more than just a good story is that Richards weaves into the book the account of her work, studying the Victorian mathematician Augustus DeMorgan. She connects DeMorgan's work on the meaning of probability with the terrible uncertainty she faces about the life of her son. As she tries to balance her work and caring for her son, Richards is haunted by a letter of DeMorgan's. The letter in which DeMorgam first proposes the famous "four color" problem was written just before the death of his daughter, and yet he seems completely unaware of her illness.

Richards is both a talented novelist and an insightful scholar of mathematical history. The way she combines these two talents makes for a unique and wonderful book. I highly recommend it: it is the most enjoyable book I have read in a long time, and it also made me realize how the way we view the world scientifically and mathematically affects how we view it emotionally and personally.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Divided Lives Redux, November 13, 2000

By 

Kathryn Olesko (Virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Angles of Reflection: A Story of Motherhood and Mathematics (Hardcover)

I just spent the past Saturday afternoon reading _Angles of Reflection_ by Joan L. Richards and was quite moved by it. For anyone who has had to grapple with balancing work and family -- including in academics where one's schedule is flexible but at times consuming and unpredictable -- this book is a must read along with other similar volumes, such as _Divided Lives_ and _True North_. Richards's depictions of "mother's time" and "professional time", as well as the conflict between the two, could very well have been a chapter in Alan Lightman's _Einstein's Dreams_. German culture is not a very hospitable environment for working mothers, but Richards navigates skillfully through maternal care, professional meetings, and daily annoyances like sharply abbreviated hours for grocery shopping. Her depiction of the German medical system, a form of socialized medicine, might be looked upon as idiosyncratic and Byzantine by all except those of us who have to deal with American HMO's on a regular basis. Past and present, as well as life and art, overlap in this deliciously engrossing volume: as she cares for her son, Richards works through the intricacies of her biographies of Augustus and Sophia De Morgan and finds in their child, Alice, a parallel story of parental concern. Richards's story reminded me of a statement attributed to Jackie Kennedy Onassis: when asked about raising her children, she is supposed to have said, "If I fail at this, nothing else matters." Above all else, Richards's love and care for her two boys shine through this volume, even on pages dense with Newton, the De Morgans, and probability theory. This book, written in the tradition of Jill Ker Conway, is required reading for anyone, but especially for those curious about how the thinking lives of academics intersects with the practical and emotional lives of the everyday world. Highly recommended.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good writing, but the point being made is hard to make out, November 10, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Angles of Reflection: A Story of Motherhood and Mathematics (Hardcover)

I found this book to be very well written, and at the beginning I had high hopes that I would like it very much. However, I found that as the book went on, I was less and less sure what point the author was trying to make and just what the focus of the book was supposed to be. What the author's son Ned went through with two unrelated and severe medical problems was compelling to read about, but not really enough to carry the book. The math history parts of the book often seemed quite unrelated to the main tale. Perhaps the book was a way to expose the many uncaring or distant medical professionals the author encountered, but this was not tied together into a real message. Or perhaps the author was telling her story to justify her decision not to return to the States with her son once he ran into medical troubles in Germany---which in my eyes didn't really need justifying---I would not see Germany as having less competant medical care than the US. In any case, I found the ending a bit unfinished---I didn't really see how all of a sudden Ned's elbow was fixed, and we were not told much about the final outcome of his seizures or his brain surgery, although the book was published at least 3 years after these problems started. I feel there could have been a much better book here with more focus and more of a unified point. However, I did finish the book and am still thinking about it--a sign of something worth reading.