Selected Topics
in History of Science
Doing Science Internationally
in the early 20th
century
Lecture 3
21 March 2024
Doing Science Internationally
in the early 20th century
Science communication

Polished pieces of thought
– books and articles
– periodicals

How do we know what scientists thought?
 manuscripts (even fragments)
 letters (if preserved)

How do we know who talked to whom?
 mentioning them in letters, reports and other ephemerals
 word of mouth
Science done internationally?

What does it mean?
 Letter Exchange
 Translations
 Universities as meeting places
 Studying abroad

Obstacles to meeting in person:
 Distance
 Borders
 …
1893: Columbian exhibition

Meeting of mathematicians: associated

Organised by Felix Klein

Two other participants from Europe:
 Eduard Study
 Norbert Herz

Compare: Antonín Dvořák (1892-1895)
 Journey nine days (train, ship, train)
 for a stay months, not days, long
American mathematics: offspring of
German and British mathematics?
James Joseph Sylvester
(1814-1897)
Felix Klein
(1849-1925)
Evanston, IL
1893

Lectures by Felix Klein

for American
mathematicians

from 28 August

to 9 September
International Congress of
Mathematicians:
Before the Great War

Zurich, Switzerland (1897)

Paris, France (1900)

Heidelberg, Germany (1904)

Rome, Italy (1908)

Cambridge, UK (1912)
Zurich
1897

Daniel Bernoulli (1700-1782)

Jacob Bernoulli (1654-1705)

Johann Bernoulli (1667-1748)

Leonhard Euler (1707-1783)

Jakob Steiner (1796-1863)
Paris
1900

Start of a new century

David Hilbert (1862-1943)

French mathematicians:

Charles Hermite (1822-1901)

Friend with M. Lerch (1860-1922)

Henri Poincaré (1854-1912)
Heidelberg
1904

Remembering:

Carl Gustav Jacobi

(1804-1851)

Affiliations:

Towns, not countries
Rome
1908

Guido Castelnuovo (1865-1952)

Representatives of math. societies and
institutions:

Academis of science

Mathematical societies

Smithsonian Institution

Ministries

Government representation
Cambridge
1912

Local organising committee

International programme
committee

Introducers of sections

(nowadays: chairs)
Repercussions of the Great War

ICSU – international science council

Abbreviations: in French (diplomatic language,
language of post office, …)

Founded by the French and Belgians

Excluded from international scientific communication:
Germans
(also: Austrians, Bulgarians --- that is: those who lost)
International Congress of
Mathematicians in the Interbellum

Strasbourg, France (1920)

Toronto, Canada (1924)

Bologna, Italy (1928)

Zurich, Switzerland (1932)

Oslo, Norway (1936)
Strasbourg
1920

Introducing new
international organisations

Excluding Germans

IMU: without Felix Klein,
David Hilbert, and others

Resistance (1924)
Toronto
1924

First on the American continent

Czech participation

In parallel: conference on applied
mathematics in Delft, NL – German
scholars also invited
Bologna
1928

Germans were (finally!) also allowed to
participate

Diplomacy

Is this an international congress?

What about the ones before?

Were they truly international?
Zurich
1932

In parallel:

Rockefeller foundation
grants

Institute for Advanced
Study founded in Princeton

(Oswald Veblen)
Oslo
1936

Commemorating
Niels Henrik Abel (1802-1829)

Note the sign

And the language

Congresses growing in size
Evening lecture
by Howard Aiken at ICM 1950:
Computing Machines
1st International Congress of Mathematicians
after WWII: Cambridge, MA / Harvard (1950)
http://legacy-www.math.harvard.edu/history/icm1950/index.html