Snezana Lawrence

Snezana Lawrence FIMA is a Yugoslav and British historian of mathematics and a senior lecturer in mathematics and design engineering at Middlesex University.^[1]

Education and career

Lawrence is originally from Yugoslavia, of mixed Serbian and Jewish ancestry.^[2] She studied descriptive geometry at the University of Belgrade before moving to England in 1991 during the Breakup of Yugoslavia and ensuing Yugoslav Wars, and later becoming a naturalized British citizen.^[3] She earned her PhD from the Open University in 2002. Her dissertation, Geometry of Architecture and Freemasonry in 19th Century England, was supervised by Jeremy Gray.^[4]

While working as a secondary school teacher at St Edmund's Catholic School, Dover in 2004–2005, she won a Gatsby Teacher Fellowship in Mathematics, with which she started a popular web site "Maths is Good For You". The site had the aim of providing a resource to bring more work on the history of mathematics into the secondary school curriculum.^[5]

Subsequently, Lawrence moved to post-secondary education, including work as a senior lecturer at Bath Spa University,^[6] Anglia Ruskin University,^[7] and Middlesex University.^[1]

Books

Lawrence is the co-editor, with Irish mathematician Mark McCartney, of the book Mathematicians and their Gods: Interactions between mathematics and religious beliefs (Oxford University Press, 2015), on connections between mathematics and religion.^[8] She is the author of A New Year’s Present from a Mathematician (Chapman Hall / CRC Press, 2019), on the nature of mathematics and the definition of mathematicians.^[9]

Recognition

Lawrence is a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, for whom she was Diversity Champion 2019-2023 and is an elected council member.^[10]

References

1. "Dr Snezana Lawrence", Academic and research staff, Middlesex University, retrieved 2020-09-09
2. Lawrence, Snezana, Diamond, Hanna (ed.), "Anka's Escape from Belgrade", Fleeing Hitler
3. , The Monge project, archived from the original on 2022-10-02
4. Snezana Lawrence at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
5. Lawrence, Snezana (July 2006), "Maths is good for you: web-based history of mathematics resources for young mathematicians (and their teachers)", BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics, 21 (2), Informa {UK} Limited: 90–96, doi:10.1080/17498430600803375, S2CID 122851275
6. Author profile from Mathematicians and their Gods
7. ORCID profile, retrieved 2020-09-09
8. Reviews of Mathematicians and their Gods:
   • Luciano, Erika, zbMATH, Zbl 1365.01002{{citation}}: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
   • Bultheel, Adhemar (September 2015), "Review", EMS Reviews, European Mathematical Society
   • Sawyer, Megan (November 2015), "Review", MAA Reviews, Mathematical Association of America
   • Toller, Owen (June 2016), The Mathematical Gazette, 100 (548): 368–370, doi:10.1017/mag.2016.86, S2CID 184146073{{citation}}: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
   • Whiteman, Jamie A. (August 2016), "For your information", The Mathematics Teacher, 110 (1): 79, doi:10.5951/mathteacher.110.1.0078, JSTOR 10.5951/mathteacher.110.1.0078
   • Muntersbjorn, Madeline (September 2016), HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science, 6 (2), University of Chicago Press: 333–336, doi:10.1086/687777{{citation}}: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
   • Howell, Russell W. (August 2018), Historia Mathematica, 45 (3): 300–302, doi:10.1016/j.hm.2018.06.002{{citation}}: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
9. Review of A New Year’s Present from a Mathematician:
   • Caulfield, Michael (August 2020), "Review", MAA Reviews, Mathematical Association of America
10. "Snezana Lawrence", Mathematics Today Editorial Board, Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, retrieved 2020-09-09

External links

• Math is good for you
• The Monge project