In 1964 article “Mathematics in the Modern World,” published in the Scientific American, Richard Courant famously called upon mathematicians to “meditate about the essence of mathematics, its motivations and goals and the ideas that must bind divergent interests together.” Greatly interested in closing the gaps between theory and practice, Courant also believed in the power of mathematics to mediate the relationship between two rivaling political powers, and to find a neutral language overcoming the competing capitalist and communist ideologies. In 1963, just a year prior to publication in the Scientific American, Courant led a delegation of some twenty American mathematicians to participate in a joint Soviet-American symposium on differential equations that took place in the newly built Soviet “city of science,” Akademgorodok. This conference uses the 1963 symposium as an entry point to investigate the complex interplay taking place between the world of mathematical ideas, the social forms for production and circulation of knowledge (from seminars to international conferences to school curriculums) and the shifting political context of the twentieth century. If the universalism of mathematical knowledge belongs to the realm of received wisdoms, the ambition of this conference is to accomplish a dual task: showing work that it takes to make mathematical knowledge universal, and describing the variety of political implications associated with mathematical claims to universality. Panel I: “Can you solve big problems?” Mathematics as a Promise of Peace, Prosperity and a New Social Order. Panel II: Mathematics Without Frontiers: Politics, Education, Exchange Co-sponsored by the NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia, the NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study and the New York History of Science Working Group.

• published: 17 Nov 2014
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