A História e a Herança da Matemática ( Challenges of investigating the history of mathematics from a perished country: Yugoslavia and the Cold War Mathematics)

18/05/2022 to 18/05/2022 Sousa Pinto Room - Department of Mathematics - University of Aveiro (or via Zoom) Snezana Lawrence ( Department of Mathematics and Design Engineering, Middlesex University)

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Snezana Lawrence

 

Department of Mathematics and Design Engineering, Middlesex University

 

Snezana Lawrence is a mathematical historian, and a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Mathematics and Design Engineering, Middlesex University, London. She is involved in various national and international initiatives to promote the use of the history of mathematics in mathematics education and is the Chair (2020-2024) of the History and Pedagogy of Mathematics International Group, an affiliate of the International Mathematics Union. Snezana Lawrence is a Diversity Champion of the Institute of Mathematics and Its Applications (UK).  With Mark McCartney, she co-edited the book Mathematicians and Their Gods (2015, Oxford University Press) and her latest book A New Year’s Present from a Mathematician was published by Chapman & Hall (2019, CRP Press). Twitter @snezanalawrence, @mathshistory

 

Summary

Yugoslavia was a young country when the Royaumont Seminar took place in 1959, a seminar that emerged from the New Thinking in School Mathematics initiative to which Yugoslavian representation was invited – the only one from the Eastern Bloc of countries (and to which Portugal, Spain, and Iceland were the only European Western countries not to have representatives).
 This talk will be focused on the Yugoslavian contribution to mathematics by looking at three mathematicians who all contributed to mathematics internationally in this period until the late 1980s. The contributions of Đuro Kurepa, Miloš Radojčić, and Judita Cofman are therefore explored, and their impact on a global scale of developing mathematics and mathematics education in their field. Kurepa’s influence and prominence is explored through his role with the ICMI and his global networks; Cofman’s influence through her work in Europe: Germany and England—as much as her work in Yugoslavia; and Radojčić’s work reached Africa through the non-Aligned movement. The talk will mention the many challenges of gaining historical knowledge from the period that is now mainly and intentionally kept out of the history of the region. Thus the talk will pose some historiographical questions that are important for mathematics as a discipline and its pursuit in the wider context of international cooperation.

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Published/edited at: 17/05/2022