Mathematical Communication during the Cold War Mathematical Institute, Oxford, 8 July 2016

Abstract

Helena Durnov a (Masaryk University, Brno) An American Mathematician with a Czech Name: V aclav Hlavat y (1894 1969) In the interwar period, the Czechoslovak V aclav Hlavat y belonged to the wide-ranging community of differential geometers. After World War II, Hlavat y, like many other mathematicians, attempted to continue in his work in the new situation. While it is commonly assumed that mathematicians in the Soviet bloc were not directly affected by the materialist worldview, this was not the case with V aclav Hlavat y. After he had emigrated to the USA in 1948 (Indiana University, Bloomington), he became deeply involved in exile politics, and politics at large also affected his work: he was involved in military grants in the USA; his pre-war library had to stay back in Volume 31 (2016) 259