From the private to the public: The road from Zurich (1897) to Madrid (2006)

Abstract

We review the history of the International Congresses of Mathematicians, from Zurich 1897 to Madrid 2006, mentioning some of the most significant personages and events (scientific as well as political) of such meetings (as a matter of fact, that history did not begin 1897 in Zurich, but in 1893 at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition). We report on Felix Klein, HenriPoincaré,DavidHilbert,VitoVolterra,EmmyNoether,LudwigPrandtl, LaurentSchwartz, Klein’s Encyklopädie der mathematischen Wissenschaften mit Einschluss ihrer Anwendungen, and the role played by the Mathematical Tripos in the education at Cambridge University during the 19th and the first decades of the 20th century (and its influence in the design of the Cambridge 1912 Congress). Some of the further topics discussed here are how the two world wars affected the congresses, the creation of the Fields medals, as well as some of the main changes that mathematics has experienced, internally (i.e., in what it refers to problems, ideas and theories) as well as institutionally (including its manifold connexions with society) during the period covered by the existence of the International Congresses of Mathematicians.