R. L. Moore: mathematician teacher

~ uch has b e e n writ ten about Robert Lee Moore, the Texas topologist w ho is best k n o w n for the "Moore Method" of teaching. An early biography, D. R. Traylor 's Creative Teaching: Heritage o f R. L. Moore [1], was publ ished in 1972, two years before Moore's death. Its author was not unbiased; Traylor is an academic grandson of Moore-R H Bing was his thesis adv i so r -who a t tempted to get Moore hired at the University of Houston when Moore was forced into ret irement from the University of Texas at age 85. This hagiography is also a bit outdated; over half of the book consists of a list of publ icat ions by Moore and his academic descendan t s as of the early 1970s. A more current resource for Mooreabilia is The Legacy of R. L. Moore Project at h t tp : / /www.discovery.utexas.edu/rlm/. Its mission, as stated there, is "To disseminate the Inquiry-Based Learning methodology of R. L. Moore and to further its implementat ion throughout the educational systems in the Uni ted States and abroad." For readers w ho are unconvinced of Moore's impor tance to mathematics, one can click there in the photos section to see all six MAA Presidents who were Moore students. How many can you name? MAA Presidents R. D. Anderson, R H Bing, Edwin Moise, R. L. Wilder, and Gall Young were doctoral students of Moore's, and Lida Barrett was a master's s tudent who received her Ph.D. under John R. Kline, Moore's very first doctoral student. And of these six, Bing and Wilder were also American Mathematical Society (AMS) Presidents, as was Moore s tudent G. T. Whyburn; Anderson and Moise were also AMS Vice-presidents. John Parker, the author of the n e w Moore biography, is a British journalist and eclectic writer who has au thored 14 military or investigative books, a m o n g them, Commando& The Gurkhas, and Inside the i~breign Legion. and 16 critical b iographies inc luding Prince Philip, The Trial o f Rock Hudson, and King o f Fools: The Duke o f Windsor and his Fascist Friends. Given the author 's backg round one wou ldn ' t expect to see much of Moore's mathematics in the book, a nd in fact there is little detail about his specific mathematical contributions. For a survey of Moore's mathematical work, see R. L. Wilder 's tribute "Robert Lee Moore, 1882-1974" [2]. Wilder classifies Moore's 68 research papers into three categories, namely Geometry, Foundat ions of Analysis, and Point Set Theory. This last category, Wilder points out, was so -named in deference to Moore's ow n preferences, as many w o u l d call it set-theoretic topology. In the Preface to the Moore biography, Parker tells of an incident w h e n Moore was be ing pho tographed for his Presidency of the AMS. W h e n the photographer offered to airbrush a wart from his face, Moore replied, "Warts and all." The author goes on to say, "And thus, in this account , I have fo l lowed the same guidance . This then is the ext raordinary sto W of R. L. Moore and how he deve loped the Moore Method, which was bigger than the m a n (with all his faults and idiosyncrasies), how it equ ipped its beneficiaries to excel in fields of excel lence other than mathematics, and how it has b e e n modif ied to meet the educat ional requi rements of today." For the c onve n i e nc e of the reader, in the r ema inde r of this review I'll try to separate the Moore Method from Moore's life, a l though the book doesn ' t