They developed a form of writing based on cuneiform (i.e. wedge-shaped) symbols. Their symbols were written on wet clay tablets which were baked in the hot sun and many thousands of these tablets have survived to be read by us today. It was the use of a stylus on a clay medium that led to the use of cuneiform symbols since curved lines could not be drawn.
This is an unmoderated mailing group for individuals with a serious interest in the history of mathematics. It deals with all aspects of the history of mathematics, including the following:
* Announcements of meetings on the history of mathematics.
* Information on new books and interesting journal articles.
* Discussion of the teaching of the history of mathematics.
* Using history in the classroom.
* Questions that you would like the answer to.
* and, hopefully, answers to those questions.
* Discussion of questions unsettled in the literature.
A brief overview of this Web site that compares what we knew in 1900 to what we know today
The Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS) is an independent public body based on the principle of self-government.
It is constituted by the members of the Academy - ordinary and corresponding as well as external and honorary members - and by those active representatives of science who hold a scientific degree (Ph.D. or D.Sc.).
At present the number of the ordinary members is 214, while the number of the corresponding members is 86. Academicians are elected by ordinary and corresponding members. The number of public body-members at present - with academicians - is 7030. They - other than academicians - exercise their rights through representation, electing 200 non-academician representatives to the General Assembly, the main organ of the Academy, for three years.
Current Research
The Structures of Computation: Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science, 1950-70 traces the efforts to develop a mathematical model of computation that adequately represents the possibilities and limits of the digital electronic stored-program computer. Beginning with the initial models, the Turing machine and the switching circuit, the book recounts the origins of formal language theory, computational complexity, and formal semantics. It looks beyond the conceptual history to examine the formation of theoretical computer science both as a recognized discipline in its own right and as a field of mathematics. The book thereby constitutes a dual case study of the historical problems of mathematization and of the formation of new scientific disciplines. Some of the themes are explored in my recent articles on history of computing.
The twentieth century has seen an unprecedented development and global expansion in Western science and its accompanying technological advances, stimulated in part by two world wars. This wedding of science and technology-or "technoscience" as it is sometimes called-has spelled great prosperity for some and a radical change in lifestyle for most. The enormous range of products and services it has produced has profoundly affected ways of thinking and social structures across the world. But it has also left its scars in the form of environmental pollution, harmful medications, technological accidents, and weaponry of unprecedented destructiveness.
The Sea and the Cities project focuses on the environmental history of urban water pollution and protection in the Baltic Sea region in the 19th and the 20th century.
Eötvös Loránd munkái és méltatása (Válogatás Eötvös Loránd tudományos és tudománypolitikai munkáiból, Eötvös Loránd és Eötvös József levelezése, versek, kinevezési dokumentumok, Eötvös Loránd méltatása, bibliográfiák)
The Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts is the most eminent scientific and art institution in Serbia. It was founded by Law of November 1, 1886 as the Serbian Royal Academy. SRA was the successor to the Serbian Learned Society with which it merged in 1892 and accepted its members as its own either regular or honorary members, its tasks and its place in scientific and cultural life. The same occurred several decades earlier when the Serbian Learned Society took over the place and functions of the Society of Serbian Letters, the first learned society in the Serbian Principality.
Professor Riskin received her B.A. from Harvard University and her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, and taught at Iowa State University and at MIT before coming to Stanford. Her research interests include Enlightenment science, politics and culture, and the history of scientific explanation. She is the author of Science in the Age of Sensibility: The Sentimental Empiricists of the French Enlightenment (University of Chicago Press, 2002), and is currently writing a book on the history of artificial life since the seventeenth century, as inseparably connected with the history of notions of consciousness and selfhood. The book's working title is The Android's I: A Joint History of Consciousness and Artificial Life. She recently did a radio interview about this work-in-progress, which you can hear at http://www.wbez.org/audio_library/od_radec03.asp#02. In October 2003, she hosted a Workshop on the History and Philosophy of Artificial Life at Stanford: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPST/ALworkshop/.
