Series VI: Oversize

The papers of the American mathematician, historian of science, and teacher, Salomon Bochner, begin with his career in Germany, receiving a D.Phil from the University of Berlin and teaching mathematics at the University of Munich. At an early age he established a considerable reputation in Europe for his work in harmonic analysis. In 1933 he joined the mathematics faculty of Princeton University, where he remained until 1968. Although he continued his work in harmonic analysis while at Princeton, he also achieved much fame in the fields of several complex variables, probability theory, and in the history and philosophy of science. His last years were spent as the Edgar Odell Lovett Professor of Mathematics at Rice University. Even though he continued to teach both undergraduate and graduate courses in mathematics at Rice, his scholarly work there was principally historical.

The collection consists of correspondence, manuscripts produced in the preparation of articles, books and lectures, financial and legal documents, and printed material in the form of off-prints and books. Bochner's correspondents included many of the most distinguished scholars of the twentieth century. Their letters complement the scholarly works found in the collection, and both series reflect the profundity and breadth of Bochner's ideas and interests and the influence he exerted in the realm of mathematics and history.

Salomon Bochner's papers were donated to Rice University and placed in Fondren Library's Woodson Research Center in 1982 by his daughter, Deborah Bochner Kennel. On 11 May she donated five record storage boxes from his home in Houston, and she arranged to have sent on 12 October an additional thirty-four boxes from the Mathematics Department of Princeton University. Along with the manuscripts came a great number of books. Only those books which were either written by Bochner or annotated by him have been retained with the papers. The remainder were given to the Fondren Library to be distributed among its regular collections.

Roughly half of the collection consists of correspondence and the manuscripts produced in preparation for a tremendous number of scholarly works. These two sections correspond with each other chronologically in that the bulk of the material in each falls between 1968 and 1981, the years Bochner spent at Rice University. The rest of the collection is less significant but potentially useful. The financial and legal manuscripts provide some detail on the practical affairs of an American academic, and the thirty-six linear feet of off-prints, which make up part of the collection, reflect Bochner's varied scholarly interests and may prove useful to the researcher when references to such works appear in the manuscripts.

The collection as received was almost completely unorganized, and a chronological or an alphabetical arrangement was used according to the nature of the various categories that emerged during processing. The number of items in each box and file is given in brackets. Separate descriptions for each series precede its inventory.