Meeting Under the Integral Sign?: The Oslo Congress of Mathematicians on the Eve of the Second World War (History of Mathematics)

"This book examines the historically unique conditions under which the International Congress of Mathematicians took place in Oslo in 1936. This Congress was the only one on this level to be held during the period of the Nazi regime in Germany (1933-1945) and after the wave of emigrations from it. Relying heavily on unpublished archival sources, the authors consider the different goals of the various participants in the Congress, most notably those of the Norwegian organizers, and the Nazi-led German delegation. They also investigate the reasons for the absence of the proposed Soviet and Italian delegations. In addition, aiming to shed light onto the mathematical dimension of the Congress, the authors provide overviews of the nineteen plenary presentations, as well as their planning and development. Biographical information about each of the plenary speakers rounds off the picture. The Oslo Congress, the first at which Fields Medals were awarded, is used as a lens through which the reader of this book can view the state of the art of mathematics in the mid-1930s"-- Provided by publisher Cover 3 List of Figures 10 List of Tables 12 Preface 14 Acknowledgments 17 Abbreviations 18 Conventions for Transliteration from Cyrillic Characters 20 Part 1 . Introduction 22 Chapter 1. Introduction: Four Strategies, the Prehistory of the Oslo Congress, and Sources 24 1.1. Four strategies for international mathematical communication 24 1.2. The prehistory of the Oslo congress 27 1.3. Sources 36 Part 2 . The Politics of the Congress 40 Chapter 2. The Norwegian Hosts: The Newcomer with Historical Traditions 42 2.1. Prehistory of the ICM in Scandinavia 42 2.2. 1928: Norwegians enter the international stage in new numbers 47 2.3. The 1932 Zurich congress and the Norwegian bid for 1936 49 2.4. The 1929 Abel celebrations in Oslo 51 2.5. Setting up the organisation of the 1936 ICM 53 2.6. Efforts to secure funding and advertise the event 55 2.7. Promoting tourism in Norway 58 2.8. Setting up the programme of plenary speakers 60 2.9. The outlook and international ambitions of the organisers 68 2.10. How Oslo superseded Princeton for one week 80 Chapter 3. The German Delegation: Swaying between Expansionism and Isolationism 82 3.1. Preparation for the congress 82 3.2. German attendance and Lietzmann’s reports 97 3.3. Further consequences of the congress for the German delegates 106 Chapter 4. The Russian Withdrawal: Isolationism out of Fear and Ideology 110 4.1. A conspicuous absence 110 4.2. Political obstacles 112 4.3. Russian and Soviet mathematics to 1936 114 4.4. Attempts to participate in Oslo 117 4.5. After Oslo 120 Chapter 5. The Italian Case: Mathematics as a Victim of World Politics 124 5.1. Introduction 124 5.2. Italian mathematicians and the early ICMs 126 5.3. Italian mathematics under Mussolini 130 Chapter 6. The Congress in the Norwegian Dailies 138 6.1. Mathematical refugees and other political and social issues 138 6.2. Commentary on Appendix A 141 Chapter 7. International Mathematics Shortly Before and After the Second World War: A Glimpse Ahead and Back Again 148 Part 3 . The Mathematics of the Congress 162 Chapter 8. Assessing the Mathematics of the Congress 164 8.1. Developments in mathematical communication 165 8.2. Measuring mathematical impact 167 8.3. Languages and geographical distribution of speakers 170 8.4. Analysis of content: thematic restrictions 171 Chapter 9. The Plenary Lectures 180 9.1. Evaluating the plenary lectures 180 9.2. C. Størmer: “Programme for the quantitative discussion of electron orbits in the field of a magnetic dipole, with application to cosmic rays and kindred phenomena” 182 9.3. R. Fueter: “The theory of regular functions of a quaternion variable” 184 9.4. É. Cartan: “Some insights into the role of Sophus Lie’s theory of groups in the development of modern geometry” 186 9.5. C. L. Siegel: “Analytic theory of quadratic forms” 190 9.6. O. Veblen: “Spinors and projective geometry” 193 9.7. J. Nielsen: “Some methods and results from the topology of surface transformations” 197 9.8. E. Hecke: “Recent advances in the theory of elliptic modular functions” 199 9.9. O. Neugebauer: “On pre-Greek mathematics and its position relative to the Greek” 201 9.10. C. W. Oseen: “Problems of geometric optics” 204 9.11. V. Bjerknes: “New lines in hydrodynamics” 206 9.12. H. Hasse: “On the Riemann hypothesis in function fields” 209 9.13. G. D. Birkhoff: “On the foundations of quantum mechanics” 213 9.14. L. J. Mordell: “Minkowski’s theorems and hypotheses on linear forms” 215 9.15. L. V. Ahlfors: “Geometry of Riemann surfaces” 218 9.16. J. G. van der Corput: “Diophantine approximation” 223 9.17. S. Banach: “The theory of operations and their significance for analysis” 225 9.18. M. Fréchet: “Mathematical mélange” 229 9.19. N. Wiener: “Gap theorems” 231 9.20. Ø. Ore: “The decomposition theorems of algebra” 235 9.21. The plenary lectures that were planned but did not take place 239 9.22. The award of the first Fields Medals to Ahlfors and Douglas 246 Chapter 10. ICMI 252 Chapter 11. Conclusions Regarding the Mathematics of the Congress 256 Appendices 262 Appendix A. Norwegian Newspaper Items Relating to the Congress 264 A.1. Aftenposten, 13 July 1936, no. 346, pp.1+5 (signed by S.-L.) 264 A.2. Aftenposten, 14 July 1936, no. 348, p.3 266 A.3. Arbeiderbladet, 14 July 1936, no. 161, p.5 268 A.4. Tidens Tegn, 14 July 1936, no. 160, p.2 273 A.5. Aftenposten, 15 July 1936, no. 349 (morning issue), p.3 275 A.6. Aftenposten, 15 July 1936, no. 350 (regular issue), p.1 276 A.7. Arbeiderbladet, 16 July 1936, no. 163, p.13 276 A.8. Arbeiderbladet, 18 July 1936, no. 165, p.5 279 A.9. Tidens Tegn, 18 July 1936, no. 164, p.1 281 Appendix B. Letter from Heegaard to Engel, 24 July 1936 284 Appendix C. Congress Report from Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 9 August 1936 288 Appendix D. Lietzmann’s Unpublished Report on the Congress 292 Appendix E. Report by E. G. Kern, the Nazi functionary in Oslo, to Nazi headquarters in Berlin, 15 August 1936 306 Appendix F. Newspaper Profile of E. G. Kern, the Nazi functionary in Oslo, 4 December 1937 (with Størmer’s Annotation, and Commentary, and Ketil Kern’s Memoirs) 308 Appendix G. Transcription of Two Recommendations Made by the Subcommittee on Conferences to the Organizing Committee of the Planned 1940 ICM 316 Appendix H. Transcription of an Attachment to the Round Letter of the Organizing Committee of the Planned 1940 ICM, Listing the Mathematicians Invited 318 Bibliography 320 Archival sources 320 Newspaper articles 321 Congress proceedings 321 1936 plenary lectures 322 Other published sources 323 Name Index 344 Subject Index 352 Back Cover 360