Vera Sanford’s A Short History of Mathematics: A Mathematical Treasure

One of the textbooks on the history of mathematics that appeared in the first half of the 20th century is A Short History of Mathematics by Vera Sanford, published in 1930 as a shorter companion to David Eugene Smith’s two-volume History of Mathematics [Smith 1923–1925]. Dr. Vera Sanford was a prominent faculty member at the State University of New York at Oneonta (or SUNY Oneonta) for more than a quarter of a century, including a lengthy tenure as department chair, at a time when it was unusual for women to hold such a position at an institution of higher education and to be recognized for both scholarship and teaching. Given Sanford’s role and influence at our institution and beyond, we (the authors) have been interested in learning more about her and sharing how she could be used as an example and role model for students in history of mathematics courses today. Thus, her A Short History of Mathematics stood out to us—as it did to her, as is indicated by this tongue-in-cheek comment to the college’s student newspaper, The Pen Dragon: “In regard to books she claims that her ‘Short History of Mathematics’ is the best that you can buy at the price—the others cost more!” [The Pen Dragon 1941, p. 9].

Figure 1. Title page of Sanford’s A Short History of Mathematics (1930). Internet Archive.