Political crises and disciplinary development. Mathematics in Germany, 1920-1960

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The project focuses on the history of mathematics in Germany between 1920 and 1960, a period characterised by political crises (Weimar period: 1920-1933, Nazi period, 1933-1945, postwar period: 1945-1960), with special attention to internal disciplinary developments as well as institutional dynamics and human resources. Based on a prosopographic-bibliometric database, which will be provided via an open access website, the project aims at a detailed mapping of mathematics within the German university system from a combined perspective of history of science and sociology of science. The project will offer answers to questions of who has worked when on what subjects in collaboration with whom in specific research fields. This will allow to map specific sub-disciplinary fields as well as the role of mathematics as a transdisciplinary resource. From a theoretical point of view, the project draws on concepts from historical institutionalism which seems particularly suited to exploring gradual-cumulative changes in the context of political crises. In this framework, we will probe several hypotheses, including that during national socialism abstract subfields of mathematics were substituted with “war-related” fields (displacement) and more applied fields were supported with targeted funding (layering). In addition, we will examine whether military patronage during the Cold War has led to a focus on particular research fields within mathematics (drift). In methodological terms, the project connects a dedicated archive-based prosopographic approach with bibliometric analyses. This double approach will allow both to systematically charter the historical and institutional development of mathematics and to develop and test a research tool that can be transferred to other disciplines and periods. In this way, the project is conceived as a model project, because its open access repository is conceptualized as a generally available tool for future projects.