Joan Richards is a historian of mathematics and science at Brown University, best known for her work on the reception and philosophical interpretation of non-Euclidean geometry in Victorian England. Her research examines how mathematicians, philosophers, and the educated public grappled with the epistemological status of geometry as classical Euclidean assumptions were challenged. She contributes to debates in philosophy of mathematics concerning the nature of mathematical truth, convention, and empirical content.
Authored 'Mathematical Visions: The Pursuit of Geometry in Victorian England' (1988), a landmark study of non-Euclidean geometry's cultural and philosophical reception
Analyzed the conventionalist position that geometric axioms are neither empirical truths nor logical necessities
Contributed to understanding how Victorian intellectuals negotiated the collapse of Euclidean certainty
Examined the relationship between mathematical practice and broader epistemological frameworks in the 19th century