Book Review….R.L.Moore, Mathematician and Teacher by John Parker….Creative Mathematics by H.S. Wall

John Parker’s biography of R.L.Moore (1882-1974) is a tour de force. Clearly written it gives a fascinating account of two periods which were seminal in American mathematical history: the last decade of the 19th century, when the University of Chicago was founded, and the lead up to the Second World War when the American Mathematical Society initiated Mathematical Reviews. But the main focus of the book is, of course, R.L.Moore himself and he is described, warts and all. His politics were uncompromisingly right wing, anti-Semitic and pro-segregation, and he made no secret about it. He was a distinguished mathematician in his own right and became President of the American Mathematical Society (AMS), but his uniquely outstanding contribution to mathematics was the quantity and quality of the research students whose Ph.D.s he supervised at the University of Texas where he taught for more than 40 years…