The origin of the Handbook of Mathematical Functions

The August-September 2006 issue of the American Mathematical Monthly has a fascinating article on Irene Stegun and the origin of the Handbook of Mathematical Functions (by Abramowitz and Stegun). (The link only goes to the table of contents + abstracts for the issue in question. Most universities have subscriptions to this journal.)

When I was an undergrad in applied math, I was informed of how useful this book can be and, indeed, I have consulted when I needed some info or useful relations regarding special functions (although the book has always been a starting point in this respect---I invariably have needed more detailed sources).

There are a number of interesting things about the origins of this book. First, it started life as a New Deal relief project that involved human computers who had very little education (the directors gave them very precise keys to be able to, e.g., compute logarithms and other functions up to a very large number of digits). (Reading about how these origins was extremely interesting. I knew about the book as a tool but had not previously had any clue about this stuff.) Second, it included more (as a ratio of participants) prominently-involved women than nearly all contemporary scientific work.

Anyway, I highly recommend this article.