Pub Date : 2016-09-01DOI: 10.1080/17498430.2016.1215856
Christopher D. Hollings
{"title":"The History of Number Theory Birkbeck, 21 May 2016","authors":"Christopher D. Hollings","doi":"10.1080/17498430.2016.1215856","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17498430.2016.1215856","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":211442,"journal":{"name":"BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129934172","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2016-09-01DOI: 10.1080/17498430.2016.1208394
S. Lawrence
{"title":"Birth of a theorem: a mathematical adventure by Cédric Villani (trans Malcolm DeBevoise, ill Claude Gongard)","authors":"S. Lawrence","doi":"10.1080/17498430.2016.1208394","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17498430.2016.1208394","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":211442,"journal":{"name":"BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125323763","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2016-09-01DOI: 10.1080/17498430.2016.1190201
Emin Aydin, A. Delice, Derya Demiroğlu
Research in history of mathematics gained momentum in the past two decades in Turkey. The present paper aims to describe the patterns in the history of mathematics research in Turkey and to analyse the research in Turkey using a mathematics education framework. The qualitative paradigm and a case study design are used in the study. The obtained data were analysed by using the document analysis technique with the help of a content analysis. The study group which is comprised of twenty-two postgraduate theses at master's or doctoral level were purposefully selected from the higher education council postgraduate theses database. Findings indicate a dearth of research in the area and that most of the theses are done in the area of mathematics education. Moreover, the focus, in general, was on attitudinal variables, and cognitive aspects seemed to be ignored.
{"title":"An analysis of history of mathematics research literature in Turkey: the mathematics education perspective1","authors":"Emin Aydin, A. Delice, Derya Demiroğlu","doi":"10.1080/17498430.2016.1190201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17498430.2016.1190201","url":null,"abstract":"Research in history of mathematics gained momentum in the past two decades in Turkey. The present paper aims to describe the patterns in the history of mathematics research in Turkey and to analyse the research in Turkey using a mathematics education framework. The qualitative paradigm and a case study design are used in the study. The obtained data were analysed by using the document analysis technique with the help of a content analysis. The study group which is comprised of twenty-two postgraduate theses at master's or doctoral level were purposefully selected from the higher education council postgraduate theses database. Findings indicate a dearth of research in the area and that most of the theses are done in the area of mathematics education. Moreover, the focus, in general, was on attitudinal variables, and cognitive aspects seemed to be ignored.","PeriodicalId":211442,"journal":{"name":"BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics","volume":"59 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131074245","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2016-09-01DOI: 10.1080/17498430.2016.1220065
Dorothy Leddy
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
{"title":"Mathematical Communication during the Cold War Mathematical Institute, Oxford, 8 July 2016","authors":"Dorothy Leddy","doi":"10.1080/17498430.2016.1220065","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17498430.2016.1220065","url":null,"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","PeriodicalId":211442,"journal":{"name":"BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics","volume":"179 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114747679","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2016-09-01DOI: 10.1080/17498430.2016.1215868
J. Wess
Leaving the historical accuracy of Stebbing’s statement aside, the word ‘tetractys’— unfamiliar to us as it may be—appears to have received much attention from the ancient Pythagoreans. Functioning as a mystical symbol, it gained numerous titles, amongst which ‘the world’, ‘the heaven’, ‘necessity’, ‘Atlas’ and ‘God’. The aim of this lecture is to provide an introduction to ancient Greek ‘theory of numbers’, from the alleged investigations of the so-called Pythagoreans up to the origins of algebra in the writings of Diophantus of Alexandria.
{"title":"John Wallis (1616–1703). Mathematics, Music Theory, and Cryptography in 17th Century Oxford Oxford University Mathematical Institute, 9 June 2016","authors":"J. Wess","doi":"10.1080/17498430.2016.1215868","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17498430.2016.1215868","url":null,"abstract":"Leaving the historical accuracy of Stebbing’s statement aside, the word ‘tetractys’— unfamiliar to us as it may be—appears to have received much attention from the ancient Pythagoreans. Functioning as a mystical symbol, it gained numerous titles, amongst which ‘the world’, ‘the heaven’, ‘necessity’, ‘Atlas’ and ‘God’. The aim of this lecture is to provide an introduction to ancient Greek ‘theory of numbers’, from the alleged investigations of the so-called Pythagoreans up to the origins of algebra in the writings of Diophantus of Alexandria.","PeriodicalId":211442,"journal":{"name":"BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics","volume":"104 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127146880","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2016-09-01DOI: 10.1080/17498430.2016.1215867
M. McCartney
proof better than another? The age old aphorism seems to be about right: ‘a good proof is one that makes us wiser’ and has the effect of leading to new theories and progress on old problems. The talks at the Christmas meeting were described in the announcement as ‘an eclectic mix of interesting historical mathematical issues’. That indeed proved to be the case, but they shared the common feature of each suggesting interesting directions for future research of a historical nature: a present for the new year ahead. Tony Crilly http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17498430.2016.1215858
{"title":"Research in Progress The Queen’s College, Oxford, 27 February 2016","authors":"M. McCartney","doi":"10.1080/17498430.2016.1215867","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17498430.2016.1215867","url":null,"abstract":"proof better than another? The age old aphorism seems to be about right: ‘a good proof is one that makes us wiser’ and has the effect of leading to new theories and progress on old problems. The talks at the Christmas meeting were described in the announcement as ‘an eclectic mix of interesting historical mathematical issues’. That indeed proved to be the case, but they shared the common feature of each suggesting interesting directions for future research of a historical nature: a present for the new year ahead. Tony Crilly http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17498430.2016.1215858","PeriodicalId":211442,"journal":{"name":"BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics","volume":"147 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127512037","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2016-09-01DOI: 10.1080/17498430.2016.1175143
K. Clark, Emmet P Harrington
The research discussed in this article is an archival study of pages of mathematical work produced by the physicist Paul A M Dirac. The pages, referred to as the ‘shoebox papers’, are thought to date back at least to Dirac's time as a student at the University of Cambridge in the 1920s. Florida State University, where the research was conducted and where Dirac worked for the last fourteen years of his life, received the entirety of his papers after his death in 1984. The research so far has identified major themes that recur throughout the collection of papers, including an interest in combinatorics and their relation to algebra problems. Due to Dirac's importance as a physicist and a possible relation to combinatorics work by Leibniz, the collection may have significant implications for the history of mathematics.
本文所讨论的研究是物理学家保罗·A·M·狄拉克(Paul A . M . Dirac)所做的数学工作的档案研究。这些被称为“鞋盒纸”的纸张被认为至少可以追溯到20世纪20年代狄拉克在剑桥大学读书的时候。这项研究是在佛罗里达州立大学进行的,也是狄拉克生命中最后14年工作的地方。1984年狄拉克去世后,佛罗里达州立大学收到了他的全部论文。到目前为止,这项研究已经确定了在论文集中反复出现的主要主题,包括对组合学及其与代数问题的关系的兴趣。由于狄拉克作为物理学家的重要性以及与莱布尼茨的组合工作的可能关系,该集合可能对数学历史具有重要意义。
{"title":"The Paul A M Dirac papers at Florida State University: a search for informal mathematical investigations","authors":"K. Clark, Emmet P Harrington","doi":"10.1080/17498430.2016.1175143","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17498430.2016.1175143","url":null,"abstract":"The research discussed in this article is an archival study of pages of mathematical work produced by the physicist Paul A M Dirac. The pages, referred to as the ‘shoebox papers’, are thought to date back at least to Dirac's time as a student at the University of Cambridge in the 1920s. Florida State University, where the research was conducted and where Dirac worked for the last fourteen years of his life, received the entirety of his papers after his death in 1984. The research so far has identified major themes that recur throughout the collection of papers, including an interest in combinatorics and their relation to algebra problems. Due to Dirac's importance as a physicist and a possible relation to combinatorics work by Leibniz, the collection may have significant implications for the history of mathematics.","PeriodicalId":211442,"journal":{"name":"BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics","volume":"485 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124414939","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2016-09-01DOI: 10.1080/17498430.2016.1222478
J. Rauff
In 1949, André Weil contributed a mathematical appendix to Claude Lévi-Strauss's landmark book, The elementary structures of kinship. In this appendix, Weil (one of the Bourbaki mathematicians) used group-theoretic techniques to model Australian marriage systems. Weil's paper marked the beginning of mathematical anthropology. This essay describes Weil's analysis of marriage systems and traces the uneasy history of the application of group theory to kinship studies.
{"title":"The algebra of marriage: an episode in applied group theory","authors":"J. Rauff","doi":"10.1080/17498430.2016.1222478","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17498430.2016.1222478","url":null,"abstract":"In 1949, André Weil contributed a mathematical appendix to Claude Lévi-Strauss's landmark book, The elementary structures of kinship. In this appendix, Weil (one of the Bourbaki mathematicians) used group-theoretic techniques to model Australian marriage systems. Weil's paper marked the beginning of mathematical anthropology. This essay describes Weil's analysis of marriage systems and traces the uneasy history of the application of group theory to kinship studies.","PeriodicalId":211442,"journal":{"name":"BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131485372","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2016-09-01DOI: 10.1080/17498430.2016.1216085
Dorothy Leddy
{"title":"Mathematics in the Enlightenment Rewley House, Oxford, 25 June 2016","authors":"Dorothy Leddy","doi":"10.1080/17498430.2016.1216085","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17498430.2016.1216085","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":211442,"journal":{"name":"BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123776939","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2016-08-26DOI: 10.1080/17498430.2016.1183182
R. Pisano, P. Bussotti
Based on our research regarding the relationship between physics and mathematics in HPS, and recently on Geneva Edition of Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1739–42) by Thomas Le Seur (1703–70) and François Jacquier (1711–88), in this paper we present some aspects of such Edition: a combination of editorial features and scientific aims. The proof of Proposition XLIII is presented and commented as a case study.
{"title":"A Newtonian tale details on notes and proofs in Geneva edition of Newton's Principia","authors":"R. Pisano, P. Bussotti","doi":"10.1080/17498430.2016.1183182","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17498430.2016.1183182","url":null,"abstract":"Based on our research regarding the relationship between physics and mathematics in HPS, and recently on Geneva Edition of Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1739–42) by Thomas Le Seur (1703–70) and François Jacquier (1711–88), in this paper we present some aspects of such Edition: a combination of editorial features and scientific aims. The proof of Proposition XLIII is presented and commented as a case study.","PeriodicalId":211442,"journal":{"name":"BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics","volume":"140 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127927189","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}