European mathematics: A history in stamps

Abstract

It is surprising how many hundreds of postage stamps from around the world have featured mathematics and its history. For the 8ECM meeting in Portorož I was invited to present a public lecture on those stamps that are related to European mathematics, and I illustrated it with more than 200 examples. I also designed a stamp exhibition for the Congress, also including over 200 mathematical stamps with historical commentary. In this article I present a selection of the stamps that I selected for this lecture and exhibition. The treatment is historical and is presented chronologically.