The Oberwolfach Research Institute for Mathematics, 1944-1963: From „National Institute for Mathematics“ to international "social research infrastructure“
Final Report Abstract
The focus of the project was the history of the Oberwolfach Research Institute for Mathematics (Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach/MFO), that has been a member of the Leibniz Association since 2005 and is internationally highly renowned. Founded in late 1944 by the Freiburg mathematician Wilhelm Süss (1895-1958) as „Reichsinstitut für Mathematik“ funded by the government in Berlin, in the 1950s and 1960s the MFO developed into an increasingly international conference centre. The project analysed the history of the MFO as it institutionally changed from a projected National Institute for Mathematics with a wide, but standard range of responsibilities to an international social infrastructure for research. That was completely new in the framework of German academia of the 1950s and 1960s. The project examined the evolvement of the institutional identity of the MFO between 1944 and the early 1960s, namely the development and importance of the MFO’s scientific programme (workshops, the influence of French mathematicians) and the strategies to safeguard the MFO’s existence (for instance under the wings of the MGP as well as the new players in research funding of the early 1960s: Thyssen Stiftung and Volkswagen Stiftung). In the methodological framework of the analysis of the development of a new and permanent institutional identity of the MFO three aspects have been key to the project, namely the analyses of the historical processes of (1) the development and shaping of the MFO’s workshop activities, (2) the (complex) institutional safeguarding of the MFO, and (3) the role the MFO played for the re-internationalisation of mathematics in Germany.
Publications
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Selbstansichten auf das Mathematische Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach, 1944–1959: Auf der Suche nach einer institutionellen Identität. Mathematische Semesterberichte, 66(1), 1-13.
Remmert, Volker R.
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Oberwolfach in the French Occupation Zone : 1945 to early 1950s. Revue d'histoire des mathématiques.
REMMERT, Volker R.
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„Retter“ von Oberwolfach (1945): Szolem Mandelbrojt und John Todd, in: Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach 75 Jahre. Festschrift zum Jubiläum, Oberwolfach 2022, 66-74
Volker Remmert
