The Intersection of History and Mathematics

The Twenty-First International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) was held in Kyoto, Japan, from August 21 through 29, 1990, the first congress that has taken place in the Eastern hemisphere. On this occasion, Japanese historians of mathe matics organized the History of Mathematics Symposium which was held at the Sanjo Conference Hall of the University of Tokyo on August 31 and September 1, as one of the related conferences of the Congress. The symposium was officially sponsored by the Executive Committee of the ICM 90, the History of Science So ciety of Japan, and the International Commission on the History of Mathematics. The Executive Committee consisted of Murata Tamotsu (Chairperson, Momoyama Gakuin University), Sugiura Mitsuo (Vice-Chairperson, Tsuda College), Sasaki Chikara (Secretary, The University of Tokyo), Adachi Norio (Waseda University), Nagaoka Ryosuke (Tsuda College until 1990, now Daito Bunka University), and Hirano Yoichi (Treasurer, Tokai University). The symposium emphasized the following three fields of study: (1) mathe matical traditions in the East, (2) the history of modern European mathematics, and (3) interaction between mathematical research and the history of mathemat ics. These fields were chosen mainly because, first, the symposium was related to the ICM, the most important congress of working mathematicians, and, second, the Kyoto ICM was held in a non-Western country for the first time. The sym posium consisted of the two Sessions: Session A for invited speakers and Session B for short communications.

Contenu
Mathematics: An Historian's Perspective.- Une Méthode de Restitution quelques examples dans le cas de Pascal.- The Birth of Maxwell's Electro-Magnetic Field Equations.- Complex Curves Origins and Intrinsic Geometry.- From Gauß to Weierstraß: Determinant Theory and Its Historical Evaluation.- The Reciprocity Law from Euler to Eisenstein.- Three Aspects of the Theory of Complex Multiplication.- The Establishment of the Takagi-Artin Class Field Theory.- Where Did Twentieth-Century Mathematics Go Wrong?.- Indian Mathematics in Arabic.- The Tetsujutsu Sankei (1722), an 18th Century Treatise on the Methods of Investigation in Mathematics.- The Adoption of Western Mathematics in Meiji Japan, 18531903.- The Philosophical Views of Klein and Hilbert.- Hermann Weyl's Contribution to Geometry in the Years 1918 to 1923.- The Origins of Infinite Dimensional Unitary Representations of Lie Groups.- Dispelling a Myth: Questions and Answers about Bourbaki's Early Works, 19341944.- Questions in the Historiography of Modern Mathematics: Documentation and the Use of Primary Sources [Abstract].- List of Invited Speakers at the Tokyo History of Mathematics Symposium 1990.- List of Speakers and Titles of Their Lectures at Session B (Short Communications).