Mastering the History of Pure and Applied Mathematics

Essays in Honor of Jesper Lützen

Toke Knudsen,Jessica Carter

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2024
• ISBN:
  9783110770070
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia del mundo

The present collection of essays are published in honor of the distinguished historian of mathematics Professor Emeritus Jesper Lützen. In a career that spans more than four decades, Professor Lützen's scholarly contributions have enhanced our understanding of the history, development, and organization of mathematics. The essays cover a broad range of areas connected to Professor Lützen's work. In addition to this noteworthy scholarship, Professor Lützen has always been an exemplary colleague, providing support to peers as well as new faculty and graduate students. We dedicate this Festschrift to Professor Lützen—as a scholarly role model, mentor, colleague, and friend.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Revisiting Fermat: John Wallis and the English reception of number theory in the second half of the seventeenth century
• Ideal chords in Poncelet’s work, from the Saratov notebooks to the Traité des propriétés projectives des figures
• How Heinrich Hertz mapped the radiation field
• Von Neumann and impossibility, from Gödel to EDVAC
• Liouville’s Journal and the Journal de l’École Polytechnique: a brief comparison
• Which groups, which forces transformed abbacus algebra, thus creating intellectual infrastructure for the scientific revolution? Reflections on the possibility to transfer the Zilsel thesis
• Cognitive artifacts in the history of mathematics
• Nicolas Rashevsky and Alfred Lotka: different modeling strategies in the beginning of mathematical biology in the early twentieth century
• Geometrical themes from Greek antiquity: how they resonated in the nineteenth century
• From heliocentrism to epicycles: a commentary on pre-Ptolemaic astronomy
• What is history of mathematics to twenty-first century mathematicians? Insights from digital history and philosophy of mathematics