International Congresses of Mathematicians from Zürich 1897 to Cambridge 1912 (Q1345066)

A brief review of the first five Congresses. The growing role of women is highlighted but not overemphasized. Two points should be raised. At the time of the first Congress, there had been three bibliographical sources printed. Reuss's bibliography for the pre-19th century material, and the Royal Society's (under George Stokes) and Poggendorff's bibliographies for the 19th century: all these came well after the event. The Congresses started an annual International Catalogue of Scientific Papers, which ran until 1914: this was not a review journal, only a classified record of what was published and by whom. Reviews of the contents of mathematical papers appeared in various places from time immemorial, and after 1869 in the Fortschritte, later in the Zentralblatt, Mathematical Reviews, the Bulletin Signalétique, and the Referativnij Zhurnal. The confusion over vectorial notation was long-lasting: for example, some people, notably the Italians stemming from Marcolongo, used the dot for the vector product until the 1960s, and also used the cross for the scalar product. One last point: following the example of Jacobi (publication of Euler, biography of Descartes) and Dirichlet's encouragement of Carl Immanuel Gerhardt (publication of Leibniz), along with many other examples, the early Congresses recognized the history of mathematics as part of being a mathematician.