This Mathematical Month - June: A Brief Look at Past Events and Episodes in the Mathematical Community

Monthly postings of vignettes on people, publications, and mathematics to inform and entertain.

See information on the 2008 Calendar of Mathematical Imagery

June 1937: On the 12th of that month, Vladimir Arnold was born in Odessa. He came from a long line of scientists, and his interest in and talent for mathematics showed early. In 1954 he began studying in the legendary Faculty of Mathematics and Mechanics (known as Mekh-Mat) at Moscow State University, joining a group of brilliant students---among them Yuri Manin, Yakov Sinai, and Sergei Novikov---who were taught by extraordinary teachers. Arnold was awarded the equivalent of a PhD in 1961 with a thesis that was written under the direction of Andrei Kolmogorov and that contained a solution of Hilbert's 13th Problem. In 1965 he became a professor at Mekh-Mat and then in 1986 took up the position of Principal Researcher at the Steklov Institute of Mathematics in Moscow. In addition to his Russian positions, in 1993 he was appointed professor at the University Paris-Dauphine, a position he held until 2005. Arnold became well known early on for his work in Hamiltonian dynamics---he was one of the founders of KAM (Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser) Theory and was the discoverer of Arnold diffusion. But his work stretches across an almost unbelievable variety of fields, including differential equations, symplectic geometry, real algebraic geometry, the calculus of variations, hydrodynamics, and magnetohydrodynamics. Arnold's strong and thought-provoking views have been the subject of many articles and books; see for example the article in the April 1997 issue of the Notices of the AMS, in which Arnold is interviewed by S. H. Lui. "Our brain has two halves: one is responsible for the multiplication of polynomials and languages, and the other half is responsible for orientation of figures in spaces and all the things important in real life," Arnold says at the end of the interview. "Mathematics is geometry when you have to use both halves." See also the entry about Arnold on the MacTutor History of Math web site.

June 24, 1880: Oswald Veblen was born in Decorah, Iowa. A gifted mathematician who produced influential works, Veblen also had a large impact on the development and organization of mathematical and scientific research in the United States. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1903 from the University of Chicago, under the direction of E. H. Moore. Veblen's doctoral thesis, A System of Axioms for Geometry, clarified aspects of David Hilbert's then-recent work on the foundations of geometry. After two postdoctoral years at Chicago, Veblen took a position at Princeton University, where his mathematical reputation steadily grew and he was made a professor in 1910. Among his most important contributions are the first rigorous proof of the Jordan Curve Theorem and his efforts to make the work of Henri Poincaré accessible to the pioneers of algebraic topology. After the start of the first World War, Veblen was commissioned as an army reserve captain. As the head of experimental ballistics at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, he made important contributions to that area. After the war, Veblen worked hard at fund-raising for the support of mathematical research, in particular bringing in funds to rescue the AMS from a budget shortfall at a crucial time in the Society's history. Veblen served as AMS President during 1923-1924. Perhaps his most notable work in nurturing scientific research was his service as first director of the Institute for Advanced Study, which was founded in 1933 with a faculty consisting of, in addition to Veblen as director, James Alexander, Albert Einstein, and John von Neumann; shortly thereafter Hermann Weyl joined the faculty as well. Veblen's early stewardship of the Institute was crucial in making it the world-renowned scholarly center it is today. Much of this summary of Veblen's life comes from "The Vision, Insight, and Influence of Oswald Veblen" by Steve Batterson, which appears in the May 2007 issue of the AMS Notices. Veblen was, as Batterson puts it, a "statesman of mathematics"---an individual who had an important impact through his own work as a mathematician, through his mentorship of young people, and through his advocacy for the field.

June 1912: Alan M. Turing was born in London. He died in 1954, not long before his 42nd birthday. Turing is widely considered to be one of the greatest intellects of the twentieth century. He established the basis for modern computers and originated what is now called the "Turing machine," a mathematical model of an all-purpose computer. Much of his thinking about computing anticipated problems that became important later on; one example is the well known "Turing test" that bears his name. He played a decisive role in helping the British to break German codes during World War II and for this work he received an O.B.E. After the war, Turing continued to work in computing and codes, and his interests expanded to include pattern formation and morphogenesis. He had all his life been openly homosexual, and in 1952 he was arrested and found guilty of homosexuality. Because of his work on code-breaking, he had high-level clearance, but this was withdrawn after his conviction. In June 1954, he was found dead of cyanide poisoning. The poison was in an apple he had been eating. The definitive work about Alan Turing is the compelling and highly readable Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges (1983). Hodges has created an extensive web site about Turing's life and work.

June 1992: The Fields Institute in Canada opens its doors. Originally established on the campus of the University of Waterloo, the Fields Institute is now located at the University of Toronto. It has become one of the world's major mathematics institutes, with an active and diverse program across all areas of mathematics. In 2004, Barbara Lee Keyfitz was named director of the Fields Institute, the first woman to serve as director of a major mathematics institute (the only possible exception is Cathleen Morawetz, who in the 1980s was director of the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University; however, Courant differs from a national mathematics institute in that it functions more like a school of mathematics in offering courses and awarding degrees). "The idea of refreshing the stream of research in Canada by interacting with other countries is an important theme at this institute," Keyfitz remarked. Read about the founding of the Fields Institute in "Canada's Fields Institute Opens Its Doors," Notices, July/August 1992, and about Keyfitz's appointment in "Keyfitz Named Director of Fields Institute," Notices, September 2004.

June 1992: The Isaac Newton Institute celebrated its inauguration. Sir Michael Atiyah, founding director of the Newton Institute, said at the time: "I think the view is at the present time that a lot of the future development of mathematics will probably be to use more advanced mathematics in related fields and to bring problems from other fields into mathematics. So our aim is really to bridge the gap by bringing people together." Since then, it has become one of the world's main institutes for research in pure and applied mathematics. Visit the Newton Institute's web site.

June 1993: At a conference at the Isaac Newton Institute, Andrew Wiles gave his first ever lecture on his proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. The institute buzzed with rumors that his lecture would contain a big surprise, but few realized just how big it would be. Using a regular chalkboard, Wiles sketched his proof for the audience of experts, who burst into explosive applause when he came to the end and concluded that he had proved Fermat's Last Theorem. It was a few months later that a gap appeared in the proof, and it wasn't until sometime after that that the proof was finally complete. But many remember Wiles's historic lecture as a high point for mathematics.