Meeting under the Integral Sign? : The Oslo Congress of Mathematicians on the Eve of the Second World War

Cover
List of Figures
List of Tables
Preface
	Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Conventions for Transliteration from Cyrillic Characters
Part 1 . Introduction
	Chapter 1. Introduction: Four Strategies, the Prehistory of the Oslo Congress, and Sources
		1.1. Four strategies for international mathematical communication
		1.2. The prehistory of the Oslo congress
		1.3. Sources
Part 2 . The Politics of the Congress
	Chapter 2. The Norwegian Hosts: The Newcomer with Historical Traditions
		2.1. Prehistory of the ICM in Scandinavia
		2.2. 1928: Norwegians enter the international stage in new numbers
		2.3. The 1932 Zurich congress and the Norwegian bid for 1936
		2.4. The 1929 Abel celebrations in Oslo
		2.5. Setting up the organisation of the 1936 ICM
		2.6. Efforts to secure funding and advertise the event
		2.7. Promoting tourism in Norway
		2.8. Setting up the programme of plenary speakers
		2.9. The outlook and international ambitions of the organisers
		2.10. How Oslo superseded Princeton for one week
	Chapter 3. The German Delegation: Swaying between Expansionism and Isolationism
		3.1. Preparation for the congress
		3.2. German attendance and Lietzmann’s reports
		3.3. Further consequences of the congress for the German delegates
	Chapter 4. The Russian Withdrawal: Isolationism out of Fear and Ideology
		4.1. A conspicuous absence
		4.2. Political obstacles
		4.3. Russian and Soviet mathematics to 1936
		4.4. Attempts to participate in Oslo
		4.5. After Oslo
	Chapter 5. The Italian Case: Mathematics as a Victim of World Politics
		5.1. Introduction
		5.2. Italian mathematicians and the early ICMs
		5.3. Italian mathematics under Mussolini
	Chapter 6. The Congress in the Norwegian Dailies
		6.1. Mathematical refugees and other political and social issues
		6.2. Commentary on Appendix A
	Chapter 7. International Mathematics Shortly Before and After the Second World War: A Glimpse Ahead and Back Again
Part 3 . The Mathematics of the Congress
	Chapter 8. Assessing the Mathematics of the Congress
		8.1. Developments in mathematical communication
		8.2. Measuring mathematical impact
		8.3. Languages and geographical distribution of speakers
		8.4. Analysis of content: thematic restrictions
	Chapter 9. The Plenary Lectures
		9.1. Evaluating the plenary lectures
		9.2. C. Størmer: “Programme for the quantitative discussion of electron orbits in the field of a magnetic dipole, with application to cosmic rays and kindred phenomena”
		9.3. R. Fueter: “The theory of regular functions of a quaternion variable”
		9.4. É. Cartan: “Some insights into the role of Sophus Lie’s theory of groups in the development of modern geometry”
		9.5. C. L. Siegel: “Analytic theory of quadratic forms”
		9.6. O. Veblen: “Spinors and projective geometry”
		9.7. J. Nielsen: “Some methods and results from the topology of surface transformations”
		9.8. E. Hecke: “Recent advances in the theory of elliptic modular functions”
		9.9. O. Neugebauer: “On pre-Greek mathematics and its position relative to the Greek”
		9.10. C. W. Oseen: “Problems of geometric optics”
		9.11. V. Bjerknes: “New lines in hydrodynamics”
		9.12. H. Hasse: “On the Riemann hypothesis in function fields”
		9.13. G. D. Birkhoff: “On the foundations of quantum mechanics”
		9.14. L. J. Mordell: “Minkowski’s theorems and hypotheses on linear forms”
		9.15. L. V. Ahlfors: “Geometry of Riemann surfaces”
		9.16. J. G. van der Corput: “Diophantine approximation”
		9.17. S. Banach: “The theory of operations and their significance for analysis”
		9.18. M. Fréchet: “Mathematical mélange”
		9.19. N. Wiener: “Gap theorems”
		9.20. Ø. Ore: “The decomposition theorems of algebra”
		9.21. The plenary lectures that were planned but did not take place
		9.22. The award of the first Fields Medals to Ahlfors and Douglas
	Chapter 10. ICMI
	Chapter 11. Conclusions Regarding the Mathematics of the Congress
Appendices
	Appendix A. Norwegian Newspaper Items Relating to the Congress
		A.1. Aftenposten, 13 July 1936, no. 346, pp.1+5 (signed by S.-L.)
		A.2. Aftenposten, 14 July 1936, no. 348, p.3
		A.3. Arbeiderbladet, 14 July 1936, no. 161, p.5
		A.4. Tidens Tegn, 14 July 1936, no. 160, p.2
		A.5. Aftenposten, 15 July 1936, no. 349 (morning issue), p.3
		A.6. Aftenposten, 15 July 1936, no. 350 (regular issue), p.1
		A.7. Arbeiderbladet, 16 July 1936, no. 163, p.13
		A.8. Arbeiderbladet, 18 July 1936, no. 165, p.5
		A.9. Tidens Tegn, 18 July 1936, no. 164, p.1
	Appendix B. Letter from Heegaard to Engel, 24 July 1936
	Appendix C. Congress Report from Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 9 August 1936
	Appendix D. Lietzmann’s Unpublished Report on the Congress
	Appendix E. Report by E. G. Kern, the Nazi functionary in Oslo, to Nazi headquarters in Berlin, 15 August 1936
	Appendix F. Newspaper Profile of E. G. Kern, the Nazi functionary in Oslo, 4 December 1937 (with Størmer’s Annotation, and Commentary, and Ketil Kern’s Memoirs)
	Appendix G. Transcription of Two Recommendations Made by the Subcommittee on Conferences to the Organizing Committee of the Planned 1940 ICM
	Appendix H. Transcription of an Attachment to the Round Letter of the Organizing Committee of the Planned 1940 ICM, Listing the Mathematicians Invited
	Bibliography
		Archival sources
		Newspaper articles
		Congress proceedings
		1936 plenary lectures
		Other published sources
	Name Index
	Subject Index
Back Cover