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This Mathematical Month - October: A Brief Look at Past Events and Episodes in the Mathematical CommunityMonthly postings of vignettes on people, publications, and mathematics to inform and entertain.
October 1994: Emails began to circulate among mathematicians about a stunning new breakthrough in topology spurred by an observation of theoretical physicists Edward Witten and Nathan Seiberg. More than a decade before, Simon Donaldson spurred great interest in gauge theory when he discovered deep connections between four-dimensional topology and Yang-Mills theory from mathematical physics. The so-called Seiberg-Witten equations simplified many of the massive technical difficulties posed by Donaldson theory and led to important new insights. The equations had actually been around for a while, but it took the insight of Seiberg and Witten to understand the equations' potential impact in gauge theory. Many mathematicians kicked themselves for not having seen the connection before. [See "Gauge Theory is Dead!---Long Live Gauge Theory!" Notices of the AMS, March 1995]. October 1900: Charlotte Angas Scott wrote a report about the 1900 International Congress of Mathematicians that appeared in the Bulletin of the AMS later that year. In the report, Scott described many aspects of the Congress, including David Hilbert's seminal lecture in which he presented 10 problems from his list of 23 problems that would go on to have a major impact on the direction of research in mathematics. The Congress had sections on history and teaching in which there was discussion, by impassioned proponents and detractors, of the idea of promoting Esperanto as the language in which scientists should communicate. Scott describes a couple of the mathematical talks, including one by Gosta Mittag-Leffler, which reported on work presented in papers he published in two volumes of Acta Mathematica in 1899 and 1900. Mittag-Leffler was also one of the speakers at the closing session; the other was Henri Poincaré, who delivered his now-famous talk on the role of intuition and logic in mathematics. At the end of the report Scott presented some of her own opinions about the Congress. For example, she wrote: "One thing very forcibly impressed on the listener is that the presentation of papers is usually shockingly bad." Some lecturers read from printed materials in a bored monotone; some enunciated their native languages so poorly that they were very difficult to understand (the languages of the Congress were French, English, German, and Italian). Scott pointed to Mittag-Leffler's section lecture as an example of how good a lecture can be. "It is not given to everyone to do it with this charm," she admitted, "but there is no excuse for any normally constituted human being, sufficiently versed in mathematics, failing to interest a suitable audience for a reasonable time in that which interests himself, always provided that it be of sufficient novelty either in matter or in mode of treatment to justify him in presenting it at all." Click here to read Scott's report. October 1815: Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstrauss was born on October 31 in Ostenfelde, Westphaslia (now Germany). Although his father arranged for him to study finance and planned on his working in the Prussian administration, Weierstrauss was always torn between the wishes of his father and pursuing the subject he loved--mathematics. He studied the subject on his own, while qualifying to become a teacher and holding various jobs. Upon publication of his paper "Zur Theorie der Abelischen Functionen" in Crelle's Journal in 1854, mathematicians took notice. The University of Königsberg awarded him an honorary doctor's degree in 1854, after which he became a lecturer, published a full version of his theory of inversion of hyperelliptic integrals, and received offers of positions at several universities. He eventually accepted the position of professor then chair at the University of Berlin. When Sofia Kovalevskaya came to Berlin he taught her privately as she was not allowed admission to the university. (She went on to receive an honorary doctorate from Göttingen and the two corresponded for 20 years.) He edited the complete works of Jakob Steiner and Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi, and is widely regarded as the father of modern analysis. For more details on his life and work, see his biography on the MacTutor website. October 1927: Friedrich Hirzebruch was born on 17 October 1927, in Hamm, Germany. An outstanding researcher with an international reputation, Hirzebruch has been a key figure in revitalizing mathematics in postwar Germany. He received his PhD in 1949 from the University of Münster under the direction of Heinrich Behnke. Another major influence was Heinz Hopf, whom Hirzebruch encountered while visiting the Eidgenössisches Technische Hochschule in Zurich. During 1952-54, Hirzebruch visited the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (1952-54), where he came into contact with other leaders in algebraic geometry and topology, the subjects in which he has made his mark. His major results include the signature theorem and the Riemann--Roch theorem, which were an important influence on and starting point for Atiyah and Singer in their development of the general index theorem for elliptic operators on manifolds. Hirzebruch's groundbreaking monograph on topological methods in algebraic geometry is still widely read, decades after its publication. Together with Grothendieck and Atiyah, Hirzebruch is one of the architects of K-Theory, which has grown into an important subject in its own right, straddling the fields of algebra, geometry, and topology. In 1957, having settled at the University of Bonn, Hirzebruch started an annual meeting called the Arbeitstagung, which has a unique structure and which quickly established itself as an important venue for presenting new research. In 1980, he founded the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, which has since developed into one of the world's main mathematical research centers. Among Hirzebruch's many honors are the Wolf Prize (1988) and the Cantor Medal of the German Mathematical Society (2004). The entry about Hirzebruch provides further details about his life and work. October 1990: The European Mathematical Society (EMS) was founded. Sir Michael Atiyah was one of the main initiators, and Friedrich Hirzebruch served as the first EMS president. The purpose of the EMS is the development of all aspects of mathematics in the countries of Europe, particularly the promotion of research in mathematics and its applications. The EMS membership base consists of European mathematical societies as well as individual members. The society has helped to foster mathematical activity within Europe, primarily through meetings and publications. The main EMS meeting, the European Congress of Mathematics, was first held in Paris in 1992, and ECMs have been held every four years since then. The ECM is the occasion for awarding the prestigious EMS Prizes, which honor outstanding work by young European mathematicians. The EMS Article Competition is intended to raise public understanding and awareness of mathematics by honoring articles written by mathematicians and intended for a wide audience. The EMS Publishing House is the publications arm of the society, producing books and journals as well as the membership publication the EMS Newsletter. More information may be found on the EMS web site. October 2005: The AMS hosts the first Einstein Public Lecture in Mathematics, given on October 21, 2005, at the AMS Sectional Meeting in Lincoln, Nebraska. The speaker is Sir Michael Atiyah, 1966 Fields Medalist and a renowned expositor known for his breadth of vision and clarity of style. The lecture, called "The Nature of Space", examines the efforts of mathematicians, philsophers, and physicists working over more than 2000 years to come to grips with the nature of space. This lecture contributes to a worlwide celebration of the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein's annus mirabilis, the year 1905 when he wrote three fundamental papers that changed the course of modern physics. James G. Arthur of the University of Toronto, AMS President for 2005-2006, initiated the idea of public lectures hosted by the AMS, as a way of raising public awareness of mathematics. Read the biography of Atiyah at the MacTutor web site, and an interview with James Arthur in the Notices of the AMS (Notices articles are free but require registration on the AMS site). |
