The Impact of Political Decisions on Mathematics

This last chapter analyzes a selection of cases where political decisions affected, positively or not, the research and teaching of mathematics: the emergence of Jewish talent after the elimination of the ghettos by the French Revolution (1789), the personal implication of Atatürk in the modernization of the Turkish mathematics, the rise of Hungarian mathematicians after the creation of the Eötvös competition in Hungary (1892) and of the US Boxer Indemnity Scholarships for Chinese students (1911), the exile of Spanish mathematicians after the Civil War (1936–1939), the golden years of Russian mathematics (the 1960s, despite the previous Stalin’s Turnabout), and the subsequent failure of the US modern mathematics program. Finally, it describes significant cases of racial and gender discrimination.