Robert A. Black, Mathematical Storyteller

African-American mathematician David Blackwell's first teaching job was at Southern University, in Louisiana. When he arrived there in 1942, it was his first time living in the Old South, and his first time experiencing the Old South's Jim Crow laws. The first time he got on a New Orleans streetcar, he was fascinated by the little signs that plugged into the top of the seats, reading "White" on one side and "Colored" on the other. The idea was that the signs could be moved back and forth, depending on how many white people there were who needed seats. If, like me, you've never seen one before, just watch the episode "Rosa" from this year's Doctor Who season. Blackwell had never seen one before, either, and it amused him. When he got off the streetcar, he took it with him. In the oral history interviews he did for the University of California, Blackwell said, "I, of course, accepted segregation but I didn't take it very ...

The Christmas mayhem kept me from finishing my promotional essay for the Mathematical Nights series, but today I finally got it done. See what you think of it. Mathematicians Are People, Too! One was the only legitimate child of a notorious poet, taught the rigors of math so she wouldn't follow in her father's footsteps. One was a career government official, who only studied math as his hobby. And one became a celebrity by carrying a lamp around an overcrowded army hospital in modern-day Turkey. Mathematicians have long had a bad reputation in popular culture. When Arthur Conan Doyle needed an archenemy for Sherlock Holmes, he created Mathematics Professor James Moriarty. When The Simpsons wanted to parody a NASA space shuttle crew, they chose to make the group "a mathematician, a different kind of mathematician, and a statistician." But is all that bad press really deserved? The producers of Hidden Figures didn't think so, and things turned out al...

My email brought me big news from Royal Fireworks Press today. My Florence Nightingale biography, The Lady With the Diagrams , is coming out much sooner than I expected. MUCH sooner. End-of-next-month sooner. There had been some rumblings about it a few days ago, when the publicist said they wanted to market it together with The Probability Pen Pals , which came out in September. But I had no idea they were going to accelerate production this much. But that wasn't all. I also got a contract for the entire Mathematical Lives series, even though I've only written two of the planned six books so far. I'm planning to start the third volume, David Blackwell and the Deadliest Duel , after the Christmas mayhem is over. It's been more than thirty years since I've gotten a contract for something I haven't written yet. Not since my You Can't Do That On Television days. My writing is in a really good place right now, and it's not a place I ever ex...

Tonight is a big milestone, as I send off my draft of Florence Nightingale: The Lady With the Diagrams to my publisher. That's two of the six Mathematical Lives books complete, in less than a year and a half. It's about time I did something to promote The Probability Pen Pals , since it's been out for a few months. Here's the Royal Fireworks flyer for it: This weekend, I've been working on a couple of promotional essays. Here's the first, which I wrote in Q&A form. See what you think. The Mathematical Lives: The People Behind the Numbers The Probability Pen Pals is something new for you. How did this project get started? Royal Fireworks pitched the idea of doing a biography series about mathematicians. I'd never thought about writing biographies before, but it made sense! After all, I've written three historical novels ( Liberty Girl , Unswept Graves and The Eyes of the Enemy ), and I've also written the Mathematical Nights ...

After this past week, I needed something to restore my hope for the future. This afternoon, I found it. I have a new hero, too - Dr. Serena McCalla of Jericho High School on Long Island, champion science fair coach. That's my brother's turf. I wonder if either he or my sister-in-law knows her. It's been quite a while now since I realized that I couldn't do anything about the mess our country is in right now, and that my attention and my energies would be of more use if I focused them on my books. Recent events have only confirmed that belief, and now the election is just a few weeks away. But it's been really hard to tear my attention away from the unending disaster that's been unfolding. Things being as bad as you thought they'd be, and then some, is hard not to think about. Fortunately, there's this little documentary called Science Fair . It follows a group of students as they qualify for and then participate in the 2017 The Internatio...

Wow, look at that. It's been weeks since my last post here, and I only posted once in all of June. I've just gotten back from my annual July 4 Indiana trip, where I tried to minimize my social media exposure. I think it was good for me. I've been thinking a lot lately about how much I want to interact with this electronic beast we've created together. Right before my trip, I made what I plan to be my final post on my old LiveJournal. I was surprised by the response it got - or rather, I was surprised it got any response at all, given that I hadn't posted there since last October. At the moment, I'm working on the second of my Mathematical Lives biography series, about Florence Nightingale and her advances in the field of statistics. When she was in her early 20s, she hadn't yet decided to become a nurse. She felt a spiritual calling to do something for the poor, but she hadn't yet figured out what it was. At the same time, her family ex...

The weirdest anime of the season has offered me a new perspective on the writing experience. Hisone and Masotan tells the story of Hisone, a young woman in the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force who becomes a "D-Pilot," someone who flies a dragon (her specific dragon is named Masotan). In the world of the story, dragons are real, and are a vital part of Japan's survival as a nation. But the public can't know about them, so the JASDF disguises them as military planes when they take to the air. Unlike in most dragon stories, though, Hisone and the other D-Pilots don't get to ride on top of the dragons. Oh no, that would be too mundane. In this story, the dragons swallow the D-Pilots, who must then fly the mission from inside the dragons' guts (which somehow transform into a hi-tech cockpit display). When the mission is over, the dragons obligingly barf their D-Pilots back out. Yes, I know it's silly, and I'm leaving out a number of problemati...

Whew! I really needed this weekend. Three days of Leadership Skills training followed by the first day of an audit to renew our Chinese export license will do that to you. I still have Audit Days 2 and 3 coming up tomorrow and Tuesday, but it's been nice to have a break before those came along. A few weeks ago, I started writing the first of my Mathematical Biographies, the project my publisher pitched to me at last year's California Homeschool Conference. While I was wrapping up The Eyes of the Enemy over the past year, I was also researching mathematicians, trying to find the right mix of people and mathematical ideas. An overarching theme began to emerge as I explored the possibilities, one that came from watching the world around me as much as it did from my research. I knew I wanted a diverse set of subjects, and my publisher did too. Various news events have convinced me it was the right decision. My current plan covers thirteen subjects over nine books. Of ...

I've been doing my best to avoid watching news since last November. I'm mostly successful, but that darn twosome of Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell are hard to resist. But even that is too much. Just like their counterparts at FOX News, they keep their ratings up by appealing to the revulsion people feel for the other side and the hope that their side is on the verge of turning the tables. The fact that they use real news stories to do it instead of making stuff up doesn't change the overall approach. That's just the business model. But this week, any faint hopes I had that the Trump Russia story would have a meaningful effect pretty much evaporated. Republicans have found a way to pin the "real Russia scandal" on Hillary Clinton, and that's all they'll need to shut down the Congressional investigations, and perhaps the Special Counsel's office as well. Robert Mueller may yet be able to get some people prosecuted on state charges ...

My sixth grade teacher liked to have fun. We did improvised comedy skits, played math games and had a camp-out in the Headmaster's back yard. It was a fairly snowy winter, and on several days he took the class out to go sledding on some of the campus's hills. The whole class, except for me. I don't remember exactly why I didn't want to go at first, but I do remember why I continued staying in as the days went on. I was having too much fun reading. In particular, I'd started reading ahead in our history textbook, because I was fascinated by the story it was telling. One part I remember especially was when Cortez met the Aztecs at just the right time for them to think he was their god, Quetzalcoatl. I remember thinking how great a plot twist that would have made if the story had been fiction. I've always loved history, be it world history, family history, sports history or whatever. I've always loved digging through libraries and resource documents...