Distributions' Herald: Harald Bohr and the Danish Roots of an Intercontinental Theory

Videnskabshistorisk Selskab indbyder til foredrag ved Michael J. Barany, Program in History of Science, Princeton University.

The theory of distributions, first proposed by French mathematician Laurent Schwartz at the close of the Second World War, was arguably the the first mathematical theory to be developed almost from its infancy through a genuinely intercontinental network of researchers. By the time the first comprehensive textbook on the theory was published in 1950-51, the theory was known in Western and Eastern Europe, North and South America, and Asia, and there would be active research communities in each of these areas (as well as Africa) by the mid-1950s. Because he was never known for major conceptual contributions to the theory of distributions, and because he died early in the theory's history, Danish mathematician Harald Bohr usually appears only as a sidelight in this story, as the chair of the committee that awarded Schwartz a Fields Medal at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1950. However, my recent Harald Bohrhistorical investigations, along with those of Anne-Sandrine Paumier, have revealed Bohr (along with his colleague Børge Jessen) to have been a crucial agent for the rapid intercontinental success of Schwartz's theory. My talk will explain how Bohr intervened directly to promote the theory and indirectly to help create the global system in which it prospered, thus showing the long-overlooked Danish roots of the global networks of mathematical research that persist to this day.

Kl. 16.30 inviterer Selskabet på kaffe, te og frugt i Institut for Matematiske Fags frokoststue, rum 04.4.19 på 4. sal.

Videnskabshistorisk Selskab
Danish Society for the History of Science 
Sekretær Donald B. Wagner

HUSK OGSÅ foredrag af Friedrich Herrmann, torsdag den 15. oktober, kl. 17, med lokaleændring, Auditorium 5 i H. C. Ørsted Institutet.