Muriel Seltman

Muriel Seltman (née Barnett; 27 March 1927 – 2 December 2019)^[1] was British left-wing activist, mathematics educator, historian of mathematics, and author of books on mathematics, religion, politics, and philosophy.

Seltman was born in Stamford Hill, a Jewish neighborhood of London,^[2] on 27 March 1927.^[1] She studied mathematics and mathematics education at Trinity College Dublin,^[3][4] and met her husband there.^[5] They joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1952,^[6] but by the early 1960s had been expelled from the party for their anti-revisionism (sympathy for Maoism and opposition to the Khrushchev Thaw).^[5] They traveled with their son to North Korea,^[6] where Seltman worked as a teacher, but, bored with the North Korean cult of personality and their life there,^[5] left for China in 1965, just in time for the Cultural Revolution. Disillusioned, they returned to England in 1966,^[6] and Seltman later wrote a book What's Left? What's Right? describing her experiences.^[5]

She taught mathematics at Avery Hill College beginning in 1968, retiring in 1981 but continuing on a part-time basis for another 20 years, through the college's 1985 incorporation into the University of Greenwich.^[2] Her works in mathematics and the history of mathematics include a translation of a book on algebra by Thomas Harriot, originally published in 1631, a few years after Harriot's death. Co-editor Robert Goulding provided the translation, while Seltman was responsible for the book's detailed commentary on Harriot's work,^[7] with both translation and commentary based on a master's thesis she wrote at University College London, A Commentary on the Artis Analyticae Praxis of Thomas Harriot (1972).^[8] She also completed a PhD at University College London, with the dissertation Descartes's "Regulae ad directionem ingenii": a case-study in the emergence of early modern algebra (1987).^[9]

Although of Jewish descent, she became a nontheist Quaker, and despite her early experiences continued to describe herself as a Marxist.^[10] She died on 2 December 2019.^[1]

Seltman's books include:

• Piaget's Logic: A Critique of Genetic Epistemology (with Peter Seltman, George Allen & Unwin, 1985)^[11]
• Thomas Harriot's Artis Analyticae Praxis: An English Translation with Commentary (edited with Robert Goulding, Springer, 2007)^[7]
• What's Left? What's Right?: A Political Journey via North Korea and the Chinese Cultural Revolution (Dorrance Publishing, 2010)^[2][5]
• Bread and Roses: Nontheism and the Human Spirit (Matador, 2013)^[2]
• The Changing Faces of Antisemitism (Matador, 2015)
• Rescuing God From Religion (Matador, 2016)^[12]
• Rescuing Jesus from Christianity (Matador, 2018)
• Marx the Humanist (Troubador, 2019)