some prumano as requested + a two cents worth ramble on klein’s encyclopedia and history of international congress of mathematicians :^)
Klein’s encyclopedia is a German mathematical encyclopedia organized by Felix Klein and Wilhelm Franz Meyer. The encyclopedia is more strictly known as ‘Enzyklopädie der mathematischen Wisenschaften mit Einschluss ihrer Anwendungen’ (translation: Encyclopedia of mathematical sciences including their applications)- or EMW for short. It was collectively written my many mathematicians.
Now, this project was not Klein’s first one. To shortly give an idea: at the beginning of the Franco-Prussian War, he was in Paris, as a part of completing Plücker’s (who died before finishing) Neue Geometrie des Raumes, and had to leave the country. For a brief time he even served in the Prussian army.
But to get back to the topic- what this encyclopedia aimed to achieve was to present the core of contemporary mathematics with a detailed source of the historical development from the beginning of the nineteenth century. The project was published in six volumes, 23 books, from 1898 to 1933. It has 20,000 pages in total.
Walther von Dyck, who was a student of Felix Klein, was also the chairman of the commission to publish EMW. He also presented the project in 1908- to the International Congress of Mathematicians which was held in Rome that year.
Now, it cannot be argued that this congress was the most prominent one, but there were still many things accomplished that were prominent:
The greatest change from the previous ones was that it placed greater emphasis on applied mathematics.
It attempted to establish an International Mathematical Union, but failed. (It is important to note that, these congresses were not exactly ‘politic free’. After the end of World War 1, the congresses of 1920 and 1924 excluded the mathematicians from the nations of Central Powers.)
An International Commission on the Teaching of Mathematics was established. This would be, unlike the International Mathematical Union, highly successful.
It can be said that, these changes and progresses had similar principles with the goal of Klein’s encyclopedia and what it wanted to achieve.
While Klein’s encyclopedia was highlighted in the congress (and that was a big thing since ICM is a big event for mathematicians), even after the conference, it didn’t take its solid shape for a while (as the dates were mentioned above.) When the last volumes of the EMW published, the first entries were already more or less 30 years old. Some publications were postponed when World War 1 hit Europe. The preparation of the encyclopedia outlived the mathematicians who wrote and edited it.
In 1942 Øystein Ore, a Norwegian born American mathematician, underlined another trouble EMW brought: “The first encyclopedia was extremely expensive, and was for the most part supported by the subscribers of the libraries. Only few people could afford purchasing an entire encyclopedia. Even single volumes were not regularly sold as they were not generally affordable”. This was another reason why publishing the encyclopedia as a whole was not really as option for a while.
Anyways-
I need to accept that no one cares much about calculus and my English proficiency is equivalent to an average third graders. Also I already made a fool of myself a bit too much in these past few weeks already so I really need to shut up.
