Mathematics and Computer Science Department
Associate Professor
Phone: 828-227-3825
Email: despeaux@email.wcu.edu
Office Address: Stillwell 471
Website: http://paws.wcu.edu/despeaux/Sloan_Despeaux.html
Education:
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Ph.D., Mathematics, University of Virginia
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M.S., Mathematics, Florida State University
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B.A., Mathematics, Francis Marion University
Areas of Interest: History of Science and History of Mathematics (in particular, nineteenth-century mathematics, mathematicians, and scientific journals in Britain).
Selected Publications:
- History of Algebra in the 19th and 20th Centuries, ed. Jeremy Gray and Karen Hunger Parshall (Providence: American Mathematical Society and London: London Mathematical Society, 2007).
- " ‘Very Full of Symbols’: Duncan F. Gregory, the Calculus of Operations, and the Cambridge Mathematical Journal," in "Launching Mathematical Research without a Formal Mandate: The Role of University Affiliated Journals in Britain, 1837-1870," Historia Mathematica, 34 (1) (2007): 89-106.
- "Mathematics Sent Across the Channel and the Atlantic: Nineteenth-Century British Mathematical Contributions to International Scientific Journals," Annals of Science 65 (1) (2008): 73-99.
- "Mathematical Societies and Journals," in Mathematics in Victorian Britain, ed. Raymond
Flood, Adrian Rice, and Robin Wilson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
Courses Taught:
- MATH 101 Mathematical Concepts
- MATH 145 Trigonometry
- MATH 146 Precalculus
- MATH 153 Calculus I
- MATH 170 Applied Statistics
- MATH 250 Introduction to Logic and Proof
- MATH 256 Calculus III
- MATH 361 Introduction to Abstract Algebra
- MATH 301 History of the Scientific Revolution
- MATH 400/500 History of Mathematics
- MATH 461/561 Abstract Algebra
- MATH 507 Survey of Algebra
- MATH 661 Applied Abstract Algebra