by I. Grattan-Guinness
© Oxford University Press 2004 All rights reserved
Jourdain, Philip Edward Bertrand (1879-1919), historian of mathematics and logic, was born on 16 October 1879 at Ashbourne vicarage, Derbyshire, one of the large family of Francis Jourdain, vicar of Ashbourne, and his wife, Emily, formerly Clay. Among his siblings, an elder sister, Eleanor Frances Jourdain, was a principal witness of the alleged vision in 1901 of Marie Antoinette and members of her court at Versailles; she was later principal of St Hugh's Hall (as it was then called) in Oxford. Another sister, (Emily) Margaret Jourdain (1876-1951), was a well-known authority on furniture, and a brother, Francis Charles Robert Jourdain (1865-1940), on birds.
After education at Cheltenham College, Jourdain studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, and took a course in mathematical logic--the first of its kind in a British university--given by Bertrand Russell. Thereafter he specialized in set theory and logic, and their histories. His research work was indifferent, in that he persisted in trying to prove the 'axiom of choice', a controversial assumption made in set theory introduced in 1904 but fairly soon accepted by everybody else as unavoidable. However, his historical work was not only very scholarly but also important both in its erudition and in publishing the views of major figures which he obtained by correspondence. One of these was the German mathematician Georg Cantor (1845-1918), the main creator of set theory; Jourdain published English translations of two main papers in 1915. He also translated and studied the logician Gottlob Frege (1848-1925), then not widely known. He published in 1916 a new edition of George Boole's The Laws of Thought (1854), but did not live to prepare an edition of Boole's other logical writings.
These editions were put out by the Open Court Publishing Company, an American house devoted to the furthering of science and philosophy, especially of German origin. Jourdain became its English editor in 1912, and was active in executing or arranging translations of works by major figures (above all of the physicist Ernst Mach), commissioning articles for its principal journal The Monist (from T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, among others), and writing and reviewing himself there frequently. He also published there and elsewhere on various aspects of the history of mathematical analysis, mechanics, and mathematical physics, and (with less significance) on aspects of the philosophy of mathematics and science, but a plan for a 'national edition' of the works of Newton did not advance.
Two of Jourdain's best known products were short books, not placed with Open Court. The Nature of Mathematics (editions of 1912 and 1919) gave a heuristic treatment of some aspects of the subject strongly informed by history. The Philosophy of Mr. B*rtr*nd R*ss*ll (1918) may seem to be light relief, but in fact many sharp observations are made about issues addressed by Russell, Frege, and other philosophers and logicians of that time; a few of the contributions are by Russell himself. In an appendix Jourdain revealed many fine anticipations of these issues by Lewis Carroll, especially in the Alice books. He also published some satire and verse.
On 26 June 1915 Jourdain married Laura Cross, daughter of the deceased Revd Walter Horace Insull of Girton. She helped him as a secretary; they had no children. After the death of Paul Carus, editor of The Monist, in 1919, Jourdain succeeded him, but he died at Basingbourne Road, Crookham, Hampshire, on 1 October, from a creeping paralysis called Friedreich's ataxia. This illness had prevented him from taking the part two tripos at Cambridge and thus hoping for an orthodox academic career, so he had always worked freelance.
While not a major figure, Jourdain made lone but durable contributions to the history of mathematics and logic. He also brought several noteworthy titles to the Open Court list, some of which (his translation of Cantor, for example) were kept in print for many years. His own main historical writings on logic and set theory were reprinted in 1991.
I. GRATTAN-GUINNESS
Sources
J. Arden [Millicent Jourdain], A childhood (1913)
E. R. Eames, 'Philip E. B. Jourdain and the Open Court papers', ICarbS, 2 (1975), 101-12
I. Grattan-Guinness, Dear Russell--Dear Jourdain: a commentary on Russell's logic (1977)
P. E. B. Jourdain, Selected essays on the history of set theory and logics, 1906-1918, ed. I. Grattan-Guinness (1991)
A. E. Heath, The Monist, 30 (1920), 161-82
G. Loria, 'Philip E. B. Jourdain: matematico e storico della scienza, 1879-1919', Archivio di Storia della Scienza, 2 (1921-2), 167-84
G. H. Moore, Zermelo's axiom of choice (1982)
G. Sarton and L. Jourdain, 'Philip E. B. Jourdain, 1879-1919', Isis, 5 (1922-3), 126-36
b. cert.
d. cert.
m. cert.
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Open Court archives, 32A/9
Archives
Institut Mittag-Leffler, Djursholm, Sweden, notebooks of letters and draft replies | Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Open Court archives, folder 32A/9; passim in general corresp. files 27 and 32
Likenesses
M. Jourdain, pastel sketch, 1909, repro. in Sarton and Jourdain, 'Philip E. B. Jourdain'
photograph, Trinity Cam. [see illus.]
portrait, repro. in Grattan-Guinness, Dear Russell, pl. 1
portraits, repro. in Jourdain, Selected essays on the history of set theory and logics, figs. 1-3
Wealth at death
£1149 16s. 6d.: probate, 13 Feb 1920, CGPLA Eng. & Wales
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