News
History of Mathematics "Oberseminar" - Summer semester 2024
2024_Oberseminar .pdfDuality in 19th and 20th Century Mathematical Thinking
Ralf Krömer and Emmylou Haffner co-edited an extensive book on the concept of duality in the prestigious series Science Networks. Historical Studies. Bringing together scholars across various domains of the history and philosophy of mathematics, it encompasses both systematic analysis and historical examination, in order to elucidate the status, roles, and dynamics of duality within the realms of 19th and 20th-century mathematics.
22/07/2024
Michel Chasles on Euclid's lost Porisms: a new outlook
Ivahn Smadja and Nicolas Michel just published a paper on the French geometer Michel Chasles (1793-1880), and more specifically on his interpretation of Euclid's Porisms, a lost mathematical treatise known only through the writings of Late-Antiquity commentators. In this paper, they analyse the methodological and philosophical underpinnings of Chasles's historiographical practice, and how it interacted with his own mathematical research. The article is available (in OA) here.
04/06/2024
Friedrich Wilhelm Levi in India: Algebraization of curriculum
C.S. Aravinda and Volker Remmert recently published an article on the German-Jewish mathematician Friedrich Wilhelm Levi (1888-1966) who spent over fifteen years teaching in India and had considerable influence on the mathematics curriculum in Indian universities of the time. He fled Nazi Germany in 1935 and came to Calcutta (now Kolkata) where he remained until his retirement in 1948: "Friedrich Wilhelm Levi in India: Algebraization of Curriculum", in: Bhāvanā. The Mathematics Magazine 8(2024)
03/06/2024
Friedrich Wilhelm Daniel Levi (1888–1966)
Beyond the Learned Academy: The Practice of Mathematics 1600-1850
Thomas Morel has written a chapter entitled "'All of This Was Born on Paper': The Mathematics of Tunnelling in Eighteenth-Century Metallic Mines " in this new volume, edited by Philip Beeley and Christopher Hollings and published by Oxford University Press.
28/05/2024
Manipulating the Sun: Picturing Astronomical Miracles from the Bible in the Early Modern Era
Volker Remmert and Julia Ellingshaus have edited a collective volume on early modern astronomy in the Nuncius series (Brill), paying "special attention to the development of related imagery ... their reception, their treatment in the mathematical sciences, and their various cultural layers, with a focus on the history of art and the history of science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries."
28/05/2024
Upcoming workshop at the BUW
Poster Tagung März.pdf
A Cultural History of Mathematics in the Early Modern Period
In the new Bloomsbury series A Cultural History of Mathematics in six volumes, Volker Remmert has co-edited the third one (Early Modern Period), in which Thomas Morel has authored a chapter "Mathematics and Technological Change: The Silent Rise of Practical Mathematics".
23/02/2024
The Richness of the History of Mathematics:
A Tribute to Jeremy Gray
A Tribute to Jeremy Gray
Nicolas Michel has contributed to this collective volume a chapter entitled "The Geometer’s Gaze: On H. G. Zeuthen’s Holistic Epistemology of Mathematics".
06/01/2024
Oberseminar History of Mathematics, Winter semester
Below is the program of our seminar for the upcoming semester.
13/10/2023
WS_2324_Oberseminar Geschichte der Mathematik_Stand_19_10_23.pdfThe History of the Society of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics. Preliminary study for a research project
Dr. des. Jason Lemberg
The project lays the foundations for the exploration of the History of the Society of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics (GAMM, gegründet 1922, https://www.gamm-ev.de/) and its Journal of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics (ZAMM). The period under consideration extends from the founding in the early 1920s to the Cold War Era. After the First World War the practical benefits of Applied Science were obvious. The institutionalization of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics, however, was accompanied by scientific and political conflicts: Especially the demarcation from Mathematics turned out to be difficult. Questions concerning the history of its origin, its special transdisciplinary character, and the political and scientific relations in East and West during the Cold War are the focus of interest. The project is accompanied by a planning group, which includes Prof. Dr. Volker Remmert (Wuppertal), the chairman of GAMM, Prof. Dr. Karsten Urban (Ulm) and Prof. Dr. Moritz Epple (Frankfurt am Main, History of Science).
22/09/2023
Prof. Dr. Volker Remmert und Dr. Julia Ellinghaus / Foto: UniService Transfer
Cooperation: The mysterious imagery of scientific instruments
A press release on the DFG-funded project "Iconography on Scientific Instruments of the Early Modern Period", is now available on the website of the Bergische Universität Wuppertal.
01/09/2023
Why Should you Trust Geometry? The Mathematics of Mining in Early Modern Germany
A blog post by Thomas Morel on the History of Knowledge Blog of the German Historical Institute.
25/08/2023
Recent publications by members of the group
Volker Remmert: „Retter“ von Oberwolfach (1945): Szolem Mandelbrojt und John Todd, in: Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach 75 Jahre. Festschrift zum Jubiläum, Oberwolfach 2022, 66-74. Available here.
Volker Remmert and Julia Ellinghaus contributed a chapter on early-modern scientific instruments to an edited volume on epistemic images, available here.
Maria Reminyi recently published an article on the Heinrich Wieleitner's historiography of mathematics and Weimar Culture in NTM Zeitschrift, available freely here.
Thomas Morel's monograph on practical mathematics and subterranean geometry (see image) was recently published by Cambridge University Press.
10/03/2023
Archived news
Past announcement
An outdated announcement.
