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Report to the International Mathematical Union and to the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science (IUHPS), Division of History of Science and Technology (DHST) 2007

Karen Hunger Parshall (Chair) and Elena Ausejo (Secretary)

In 2007, the International Commission for the History of Mathematics (ICHM) has continued to pursue its dual aims of encouraging the study of the history of mathematics and of promoting a high level of historically and mathematically sophisticated scholarship in the field internationally. It has done so in the following ways:

Meetings of the Executive Committee (EC) of the ICHM

Thus far this year, the EC has had three of its four annual e-meetings (the fourth, as per our rules of governance, is scheduled for December). Among the business discussed and the issues considered were: the election of a new national representative from Japan on the EC; the best ways to use the ICHM's limited resources in support of activities in the history of mathematics internationally; the redesign of the ICHM's webpages (see the section on "Projects" below); and consideration of a series of proposals for ICHM co-sponsored events internationally (see the next section).

Conferences /Symposia/ Congresses

In 2007, the ICHM has or will have co-sponsored the following eight events internationally:

  1. ICHM Special Session at the Joint Meetings of the AMS-MAA, New Orleans, LA, USA (January 2007)
  2. ICHM Co-Sponsored Session on "Some Current Trends in Research on History of Mathematics in France and Spain" at the First French-Spanish Congress of Mathematics, Zaragoza, Spain (July 2007)
  3. ICHM Satellite Conference on the History of Mathematics at the Fourth International Congress on Representation Theory, Lhasa, Tibet, (July, 2007)
  4. ICHM-sponsored Session on Leonhard Euler at the Joint Meeting of the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics (CSHPM) and the British Society for the History of Mathematics (BSHM) in Montréal, Canada (July, 2007)
  5. Symposium "In Commemoration of the 300th Anniversary of Euler's Birth and the 400th Anniversary of the Publication of the Chinese Translation of Euclid's Elements," Chengdu, China, 12-15 October, 2007
  6. Session on "Leonhard Euler: On the Tercentenary of His Birth: Primary Sources, Rivalry with Clairaut and d'Alembert, and the Second St. Petersburg Period" at the History of Science Society Annual Meeting, Arlington, VA USA, 1-4 November, 2007
  7. Session on "The Peirces of Boston: Snapshots of Science in 19th-Century America" at the History of Science Society Annual Meeting, Arlington, VA USA, 1-4 November, 2007
  8. Leonhard Euler's Tercentenary Brazilian Meeting at the University of São Paulo (USP), São Paolo, Brazil, 4-5 December, 2007

For the full reports on those meetings that have already concluded, see the ICHM's webpages.

Projects

  1. The ICHM has completely redesigned and updated its webpages.
  2. The ICHM continues to compile and maintain a searchable database of information on historians of mathematics around the world.
  3. The ICHM has begun an e-mail list and regular e-mailing of its national representatives in an effort both to keep them more informed on the ICHM's activities than is possible in an annual snail mailing and to engage them more directly in the ICHM by encouraging them to report on events of interest in their respective countries.

Publications

  1. Historia Mathematica is the official journal of the ICHM. Under the direction of Benno van Dalen (Germany), Editor, and June Barrow-Green (United Kingdom), Managing Editor, the journal appears four times annually and comprises annually roughly 525 pages of original research in the history of mathematics from all times and cultures. It is published by Elsevier Science and is available electronically to subscribers of IDEAL.

The members of the EC of the ICHM

The EC's current members are: Karen Hunger Parshall (United States), Chair; Craig Fraser (Canada), Vice Chair; Elena Ausejo (Spain), Secretary; Menso Folkerts (Germany), Treasurer; Natalja Ermolaeva (Russia); Alejandro Garçiadiego (Mexico); Niccolo Guicciardini (Italy); Sergio Nobre (Brazil); QU Anjing (China); Luis Saraiva (Portugal); Ken Saito (Japan); and Ahmed Djebbar (France/Algeria). Ex officio members are: Kirsti Andersen (Denmark); Joseph W. Dauben (United States); and Christoph Scriba (Germany). The two IMU members are: Peter Neumann (United Kingdom) and Christian Houzel (France). For a list of the current ICHM national members, see the ICHM website under "Members."