Global Mathematics in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries

Northwestern University, Evanston IL

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports a two year postdoctoral research and training project to advance an interdisciplinary program of scholarship on the origins and consequences of globalization in modern mathematics from the early twentieth century to the present. By examining and promoting new understandings of the origins and consequences of today's global mathematical discipline, this project offers numerous broader impacts. Better accounts of mathematicians' social organization may improve participation in mathematics by drawing attention to hidden social and structural barriers, while increasing mathematicians' awareness of the origins and legacies of current disciplinary norms and institutions. Public engagement activities from the project will offer resources for science and mathematics educators and policymakers and increase public appreciation of mathematics, its history, and its ongoing societal relevance, especially in contexts where such historical materials are not readily available. A century ago, the world of professional mathematics was cloistered and narrow, limited by geographic, political, institutional, and intellectual divisions. Now, leading mathematicians regularly travel the globe and collaborate across great distances. The proposed training and research will help define newly emerging scholarship in the global history and sociology of mathematics, developing connections within a nascent scholarly community for the subject and offering one of the first comprehensive accounts of the mid-century emergence of mathematics as a continent-crossing enterprise. This work contributes to multiple open topics in historical and sociological studies of the discipline, including the history and sociology of mathematical collaboration, the institutional shaping of mathematics, the intellectual consequences of changing social structures in mathematics, the politics of language and socioeconomic inequality, and the course and effects of globalization in mathematics and related disciplines. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.