ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Transformations of Mathematics in the 20th Century

Session Submission Type: Organized Session

English Abstract

Our panel aims towards a juxtaposition of current work in the history of mathematics in the 20th century with a special focus on the development of mathematics. Such transformations may be personnel (who were the relevant actors of the discipline and where did they work?), thematic (which subdisciplines gained/lost relevance over time and why?) or a combination of both, raising questions about the causal links between both dimensions. In addition to this, we are especially interested in the methodological differences and implications of various approaches to these dimensions: What are the potentials and limits of e.g. recent quantitative prosopographical or bibliometrical methodologies? How do these contrast with more classical qualitative case studies? What are promising ways to combine these methodologies in order to generate new insights into the character and development of mathematics in the 20th century?

Sub Unit

• Organized Session

Chair

• Michael J. Barany, University of Edinburgh

Individual Presentations

• Between Necessity and Interest: The Expansion of the Mathematical Community in the United States, 1945-1991. - Lukas Alexander Schievelbusch, University of Wuppertal

• “Göttingen, we have a problem!” – Rethinking Listing and Institutionalization of Problems in Modern Mathematics - Jan Vrhovski, University of Edinburgh

• From Concrete Forms to Abstract Structures: A Bibliometric Study of the Term ‘Structure’ in Mathematical Review Journals from 1889 to the 1960s - Elife Çetintaş, University of Wuppertal

• Promath – A Prosopographical Take on the Development of the Mathematical Elite in Germany 1920-1960 - Tim Lork, University of Wuppertal

Session Organizer

• Lukas Alexander Schievelbusch, University of Wuppertal