Lillian Lieber
Born on 26 July 1886 in Nicolaiev, Russia, Lillian Lieber was a mathematician and writer of popular science books. Lieber moved to the US with her family in 1891. Little is known about her early life. She received her BA from Barnard College in 1908, her MA from Columbia University in 1911, and her PhD from Clark University in 1914. After teaching at Wells College in Aurora, New York, and the Connecticut College for Women, she married Hugh Gray Lieber in 1926. She joined the mathematics department at Long Island University in 1934, became chair in 1945, and was made a full professor in 1947. Over her career she published some 17 books, which were written in a unique, free-verse style and illustrated with whimsical line drawings by her husband. Her works include The Einstein Theory of Relativity (1936), The Education of T. C. MITS (1942), and Infinity: Beyond the Beyond the Beyond (1953). Her character T. C. MITS was “the Celebrated Man in the Street,” through whom she tried to make complex ideas in mathematics and physics accessible to the general public. In her preface to The Einstein Theory of Relativity, she states one precept in what came to be known as the Lillian Lieber standard for popular science writing: “just enough mathematics to HELP and NOT to HINDER the lay reader.” Although Lieber retired from Long Island University in 1954, she continued to write and publish into the 1960s. She died in July 1986, just weeks shy of her 100th birthday.
Date in History: 26 July 1886
