What Do You Need a Mathematician For? Martinus Hortensius ’s “Speech on the Dignity and Utility of the Mathematical Sciences ” (Amsterdam 1634)

Send submissions to David E. Rowe, Fachbereich 17--Mathematik, Johannes Gutenberg University, D55099 Mainz, Germany. I n early modem Europe the term mathematical sciences was used to describe those fields of knowledge that depended on measure, number, and weight--reflecting the much-quoted passage from the Wisdom of Solomon 11, 20: "but thou hast ordered all things in measure and number and weight." This included astrology and architecture as well as arithmetic and astronomy. These scientiae or disciplinae mathematicae were generally subdivided into mathematicae purae, dealing with quantity, continuous and discrete as in geometry and arithmetic, and mathematicae mix tae or mediae, dealing n…

The birth and youth of Compositio Mathematica: ‘Ce périodique foncièrement international’

The journal Compositio Mathematica was founded by Luitzen E. J. Brouwer to counter his dismissal from the Mathematische Annalen in 1928. In spite of the economic crisis, Brouwer succeeded in finding a publisher (Noordhoff), an editorial board and subscribers. The founding took place at the time of the rise of the Third Reich, which caused problems of a political nature. The German editors followed Ludwig Bieberbach in 1934 when he left the board because Brouwer refused to dismiss the Jewish editors. After a period of flourishing, the publication was suspended at the beginning of the occupation of Holland in 1940. The post-war restart of the journal led to a painful conflict between Brouwer …

What's Nazi about Nazi Science? Recent Trends in the History of Science in Nazi Germany

Books under review: Deichmann, Ute 2001. Fluchten, Mitmachen, Vergessen: Chemiker und Biochemiker in der NS-Zeit. Weinheim et al.: Wiley—VCH; Hausmann, FrankRutger (ed.) 2002. Die Rolle der Geisteswissenschaften im Dritten Reich 1933– 1945. Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag; Maier, Helmut (ed.) 2002. Rustungsforschung im Nationalsozialismus: Organisation, Mobilisierung und Entgrenzung der Technikwissenschaften. Gottingen: Wallstein Verlag; Proctor, Robert N. 1999. The Nazi War on Cancer. Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press; Segal, Sanford L. 2003. Mathematicians under the Nazis. Princeton/ Oxford: Princeton University Press; Szollosi-Janze, Margit (ed.) 2001. Science in the Third Reich. Ox…

In the Service of the Reich: Aspects of Copernicus and Galileo in Nazi Germany’s Historiographical and Political Discourse

ArgumentFocus of this paper is on the historiographical fate of Nicholas Copernicus and Galileo Galilei in Nazi Germany. Both played interesting roles in Nazi propaganda and the legitimization of Nazi political goals. In the “Third Reich,” efforts to claim Copernicus as a German astronomer were closely linked to revisionist policies in Eastern Europe culminating in the war-time expansion. The example of Galileo’s condemnation by the Catholic Church in 1633 became a symbol of its unjustified opposition to new “scientific” results, namely Nazi racial theory. After Catholic opposition against Nazi racial theory had reached a peak in 1937, the Galileo affair was turned into an instrument of Naz…

Ungleiche Partner in der Mathematik im ?Dritten Reich? Heinrich Behnke und Wilhelm S�ss

Im Mittelpunkt des Berichts stehen die Mathematiker Heinrich Behnke und Wilhelm Suss. Zunachst werden die Positionen von Behnke und Suss im „Dritten Reich” skizziert. Zwischen den beiden entwickelte sich im Zweiten Weltkrieg eine ungleiche Partnerschaft, die anhand von zwei Beispielen dargestellt wird: der von Suss angestrebten Reorganisation des mathematischen Zeitschriftenwesens und Behnkes Unterstutzung fur seinen Freund und Kollegen Henri Cartan.

Visual legitimisation of astronomy in the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries: Atlas, Hercules and Tycho’s nose

Abstract Images of the virtuous hero Hercules and the crowned King Atlas offered considerable potential for legitimising the new astronomy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The accomplishments of Hercules, a seeker after virtue, with his exceptional learning, his role as disseminator of knowledge, his significance as an example of ideal manhood and, in addition to all, his achievement of immortality, invited comparison with the endeavours of astronomers. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Hercules and Atlas appear as the spiritual authorities of the discipline, and each was called into use to symbolise both the old and the new astronomy. Both figures embodied qual…

Mini-Workshop: Max Dehn: his Life, Work, and Influence

History of Mathematics: A Global Cultural Approach

Galileo, God and Mathematics

This chapter explores the relationship between God and the mathematics of Galileo. In the early modern era, the mathematical sciences began to produce potential instruments of power and to supply technically and socially valuable knowledge—for use in engineering, administration, and social control. This ability to produce useful knowledge and potential instruments of power became the critical basis for the existence of the mathematical sciences. In discussing Galileo's thoughts about mathematics and the mathematical sciences, it is necessary to keep in mind that he did not codify them and that he worked—as did many early modern scholars—with conflicting epistemologies. Furthermore, there is…

Mathematical Publishing in the Third Reich: Springer-Verlag and the Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung

Stiss. He was known to take interest in DMV affairs and they believed his views coincided with those current at the DMV board, in other words, with their own. Stiss had been a pupil of Ludwig Bieberbach (1886-1982), who in the Third Reich propagated an anti-Semitic, racial theory of Deutsche Mathematik and led a group of National Socialist mathematicians strongly opposed to the DMV. The DMV board hoped that Stiss might be able to reconcile his former teacher with the DMV, or at least safeguard it and its politics against the threat of political attack from Bieberbach's faction. In addition, Stiss had recently become a member o f the Nazi Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei…

AsYouLikeHim: Images ofGalileoSince the17thCentury