AMUM - Transversal Knowledge Economy: Applied Mathematics and Mechanics in Germany as Reflected by Disciplinary, Organisational and Political References, 1920-1970
Abstract
The beginning of the 20th century saw a new constellation of the scientific fields of applied mathematics and mechanics in Germany. Both transcended their hitherto dominant disciplinary references and both found themselves dependent on each other in their rapid expansion. After the First World War, this new constellation allowed both fields to develop significantly in new disciplinary contexts and practical fields of application and established a dynamic growth that continues to this day and is still jointly shaped.The project investigates the development and shaping of applied mathematics and mechanics in the German states that was initiated in this way. Three historical periods will be examined: the Weimar Republic, the National Socialist era and the two German states during the Cold War up to around 1970. The aim is to produce a history of the structure and interconnectedness of knowledge that examines the multiple transversality of the dual field of knowledge of applied mathematics and mechanics on the three levels of disciplinary development, scientific organisation and specialist policy, and international scientific relations. The material holdings and publications of the Gesellschaft für Angewandte Mathematik und Mechanik (GAMM), founded in 1922, and the closely associated Zeitschrift für Angewandte Mathematik und Mechanik (ZAMM) serve as a methodological approach to analysing this historical development. In this project, GAMM and ZAMM are understood as a productive expression of the historical development under investigation, allowing us to study the changing disciplinary relationships between applied mathematics and mechanics and mathematics, engineering and the natural sciences, as well as the political aspects of the subject under the rapidly changing political conditions and in the changing international contexts of the period under investigation.
Principal Investigator
Dr Jason Lemberg
Involved Persons
Professor Dr Moritz Epple (co-investigator)
Mehmet Ozan (student assistant)
Term
November 2025 - November 2027
Financed by German Research Foundation (DFG)
Project on GEPRIS
Activities
Conference "Mathematics in Germany in the 20th Century" (planned for September 2026)
Publications
Lemberg, Jason, Separating internationalisation? Episodes from the Cold War History of GAMM. In: ZAMM (2025), No. 105, e70146. (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/zamm.70146)
