Kenneth O. May, 1915–1977: His early life to 1946

Abstract

Kenneth Ownsworth May graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1936 with highest honors in mathematics. The following year he received his Masters degree and became a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs, and during the next two years he traveled to England, Europe, and Russia. On his return to the United States he became active in the Communist Party, the consequences of which would plague him for years. He joined the United States Army in 1942, serving with distinction, and after the war returned to Berkeley, where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1946. He immediately accepted an assistant professorship at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, later moving to the University of Toronto. This part of May's biography focuses on the events up to his accepting a position at Carleton College. In this early phase his openness, his emphasis on good communications in the process of education, and his interest in practical procedures emerge which later set the background for his successful career as a leading historian of mathematics and the founding editor of Historia Mathematica.