Mathematical Change in the 19th Century: Issues and Approaches
- Date: 03/26/2008
Tom Archibald (Mathematics, SFU)
University of Victoria
The 19th Century is the period during which the university-based
international mathematical community came into being. It is also a time
when mathematics changed profoundly, becoming more abstract, and
distancing
itself to some degree in its practice from the natural sciences.
Historians writing in the 20th Century had a tendency to see these
changes as necessary, as part of a process in which the essential
concept-based nature
of mathematics emerged from a more applied background. In this paper we
examine this notion with reference to some specific examples including
work of Riemann, Weierstrass, Kronecker, Dedekind, Hermite, and
Poincaré.
Special PIMS Lectures at UVIC 2008