Sylvia Nickerson

Sylvia Nickerson is a historian of mathematics and science with a PhD in the field from the University of Toronto (2014). She currently teaches history of mathematics, science communication, and data visualization courses at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Arts and Science and McMaster University's Department of Mathematics and Statistics. Her research examines mathematics and science as forms of creative literature shaped by cultural imagination and material processes.

Her editorial work includes serving as Content Editor for the Bulletin of the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Mathematics (2020-2023) and contributing to the Correspondence of John Tyndall project (2014-2017), where she transcribed over 400 letters. She has received the Peter Isaac Essay Prize for her research on Victorian mathematical publishing and the Doug Wright Award for her comics art.

Her publications focus on intersections of mathematics, gender, and religion, with specific attention to figures like William Kingdon Clifford and John Murray III. She integrates primary historical sources into undergraduate teaching through the TRIUMPHS project and explores visual storytelling in mathematics education. Her recent work examines how mathematical concepts like infinity and probability evolved through cultural and historical contexts.

• Science journalist Dan Falk highlighted her research on John Murray III, Darwin's publisher who rejected evolution despite publishing Origin of Species
• Her 2023 article on the Clifford couple appears in the special issue Calculating Couples: Domesticity and Gender in the Making of Mathematical Careers