Studying appropriations of past lives: using metabiographical approaches in the history of mathematics

B iographies of mathematicians may be written for any number of more or less explicitly stated reasons: The biographer might have the ambition to present ‘accurate’, ‘factual’ or ‘objective’ accounts of past lives; but in reality, his biography is only an ‘imperfect sketch’ essentially framed by the choices he has made, as one mathematical biographer has observed (see Halsted 1895, 106; see also Sørensen 2016, 88, 93). These choices are, in turn, subject to the availability of sources, to the expertise and interest of the biographer, and to the context in which the biography is intended to be read. Thus, it is possible for different authors in different contexts to write multiple biographies of the same protagonist; and collections of biographies about different people can serve both as a dictionary with dates of birth and death, and as corpuses that present past lives to modern readers for them to learn something. The biographical genre has developed substantially over the centuries with inputs from various practices. From obituaries and depictions of the Saints, hagiographic characteristica such as the framing in turns of positive traits worthy of emulation have entered and endured in biographies (see also France 2002). And many other intellectual contexts have added analytical perspectives such as philosophical, psychological, social, economical, and biological frames for understanding the lives of those worthy of interest. Additional dimensions are added when the biographee is a scientist or a mathematician whose work and professional context and values may be directly accessible only to small readerships (for just some discussions on scientific biography, see, for example, Nye 2006; Porter 2006; S€ oderqvist 2007). Yet, when the identities (professional or otherwise) of the biographee, the biographer, and the intended reader align, biographies can become valuable entry points into studying these identities and the contexts in which they are formed. Although both deal with the past, history and biography are distinct endeavours in that they seek to attain different objectives, as Francis Bacon (1561–1626) argued (see also Caine 2010, 9ff). Biographies are essentially focused on people of perceived importance, and their purpose is often to make important individuals understandable and familiar to present readers. Other historical accounts, by comparison, either chronologies or narrations, seek to represent and understand complex events and dynamics by unravelling causes and contexts.