MacTutor
Union of Latin-speaking Mathematicians
Founded in 1957
The Groupement des mathématiciens d'expression latine, Union of Latin-speaking Mathematicians, was founded in September 1957. Let us make it clear that Latin-speaking here does not refer to the language of Ancient Rome but to the Romance languages which are mainly French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. With our perspective in the mathematical world of the 21st century, it seems difficult to understand why one would have a mathematical association built around language so we will try to give some background to understand why this happened.
The International Mathematical Union had been founded in 1920 soon after the end of World War I. From the start there were arguments over whether mathematicians from Germany, Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria could be members. After many arguments, in 1932 the Union suspended itself and by 1936 a decision had been taken not to re-establish it. Following World War II, the International Mathematical Union was formally re-founded in 1951 and its statutes and by-laws were drawn up in 1952. It had only one official language, namely English, and it was seen as an American dominated organisation.
The situation in Europe following World War II was a very difficult one. There was much devastation but this was easier to put right than the tensions between people who had been fighting each other. In these years [2]:-
In 1954 the project resurfaced with a correspondence between Denjoy and Rey Pastor regarding a Union of Latin Mathematicians. Rey Pastor wrote [2]:-
In October 1955, at the Pavia meeting of the Italian Mathematical Union, by agreement of representatives from the Italian Mathematical Union, the Société Mathématique de France and the Centre Belge de Recherches Mathématiques, there took shape the organisation of a first Réunion des Mathématiciens d'expression latine to he held in 1957. The representatives included André Marchaud (1887-1973), André Lichnerowicz, Lucien Godeaux (1887-1975), Enrico Bompiani, and Giovanni Sansone. A Comité international d'organization, chaired by André Marchaud, was set up to organise the 1957 Réunion, which eventually took place in Nice, France. Here is the Announcement:
On the initiative of the Italian Mathematical Union and the French Mathematical Society, and with the support of the Municipality of Nice, a Meeting of Latin-Speaking Mathematicians will take place from 12 to 19 September 1957, at the Mediterranean University Centre in Nice.
This meeting will take the form of a "Colloquium" comprising nine lectures by invitation, on subjects chosen from the following fields:
Apart from the planned lectures and the discussions that will follow them, the meeting will not include any communication.
Mathematicians wishing to participate in this meeting are requested to contact the secretariat of the meeting as soon as possible; more precise information will then be provided to them, particularly concerning the material conditions of the stay.
A registration fee of one thousand francs (1,000 francs) per person will be requested (postal checking account 5215 Paris, in the name of the Société Mathématiques de France, 11, Rue Pierre-Curie, Paris, 5e).
Address of the secretariat, until 31 July 1957: Réunion des Mathématiciens d'Expression Latine, Société Mathématiques de France, 11, Rue Pierre-Curie, Paris, 5e.
from 1 August to 19 September 1957: Réunion des Mathématiciens d'Expression Latine, Centre Universitaire Méditerranéen, 65, Promenade des Anglais, Nice (Alpes Maritimes).
Planned lectures:
Opening ceremony:
P Montel: Historical lecture.
José Adem: Cohomological operations of the higher order.
B Eckmann: Homology and duality.
F Gaeta: On the effective decomposition of an algebraic variety based on the calculation of the forms associated with the irreducible components.
P Gillis: Properties of the solutions of certain classes of partial differential equations of the elliptic type.
M L'Abbé: Algebraic structures suggested by mathematical logic.
C Miranda: On some aspects of the theory of partial differential equations of the elliptic type.
M Zaluar-Nunes: Title not received.
B Segre: Recent prospects in the theory of correspondences.
S Stoilow: Some recent extensions of the notion of an analytic function of a complex variable of a geometric nature.
Closing session:
F Severi: Today's mathematics.
During the Nice meeting the statutes of a new formal, permanent organisation, the Groupement des mathématiciens d'expression latine were voted and approved by unanimity. Its main task was to organise every four years meetings of mathématiciens d'expression latine, and this was to be done so as not to interfere with the International Mathematical Union inspired International Congresses of Mathematicians.
A close look at the 1957 Nice Réunion reveals the main features of the first meetings of mathematicians of "Latin" expression. It gathered between 140 and 150 mathematicians coming not only "from all Latin countries" (toute la latinité) but also from "friendly countries wherein Latin languages are still honoured by scientists" - In total, they came from 14 countries, including Poland, Yugoslavia, Israel, Switzerland and Canada; only Mexico was represented among the Latino-American countries, although Brazil showed political support for it. The French delegation was the strongest one numerically (53 people) as well as by the distinguished mathematicians it included - among them, Gustave Choquet, Paul Montel, Gaston Julia, André Lichnerowicz, and Henri Cartan. The Italian delegation, with 43 mathematicians, was also noticeable. Honorary invitations were sent to Duro Kurepa, Charles de La Vallée-Poussin, José-Luis Massera, Heinz Hopf, and Luís Santaló. The meeting was supported by the French Foreign Office (Ministère des Affaires Étrangères) and patronised by distinguished institutions, including the Haut Patronage of the Presidency of the Republic. As André Marchaud put it, the meeting was "riche des parrainages officiels les plus flatteurs."
French mathematicians played an important role first in the organization of the Nice meeting, and then in setting up the Groupement and making it work. They also were for obvious reasons the natural leaders in most of the mathematical fields and discussions held in the meetings. French was the lingua franca of the meetings and of the Groupement, and the language in which most of the papers discussed in the first three meetings (held in Nice, France (1957), Florence-Bologna, Italy (1961), and Namur, Belgium (1965)) were published. The very structure of these meetings highlighted the presence of distinguished mathematicians (mostly from France but also from Poland and Switzerland, Italy and Belgium) whose presentations were given pride of place. With very few exceptions, participants came from Europe, with France (and Italy and Belgium in second and third positions) providing most of the participants, always more than 65% of the total numbers and sometimes even more than 80 per cent. By their participation, their structure, their speakers, and their patrons, the first meetings as well as the Groupement of "Latin" mathematicians were a political platform to call for international attention and to build up an international mathematical community under French leadership.
This state of affairs, however, was to change dramatically from the late 1960s onwards. By 1981, the sixth meeting (which was then called the VIe Congrès) held in Luxembourg, had the structure of any standard international congress, with some invited lectures but with a programme mostly filled up by short non-invited talks. Participants came mostly from Spain (49 out of a total of 185). Out of a total of 74 talks, Spaniards gave 25. France (17 participants), had a similar presence as Italy (19), Belgium (17), Luxembourg (23), Mexico (13), and francophone Africa (14). The numbers of talks given by French and Italian mathematicians were modest, 5 and 9 respectively, and they did not come from prestigious mathematicians. The French language had lost its privileged status, as many talks were given in the national languages of the participants, including Portuguese, Spanish and Catalan. The meetings and the Groupement of "Latin" Mathematicians had evidently lost their raison d'être. The last meeting was held in Coimbra in 1985. The Groupement voted its self-dissolution shortly afterwards.
The International Mathematical Union had been founded in 1920 soon after the end of World War I. From the start there were arguments over whether mathematicians from Germany, Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria could be members. After many arguments, in 1932 the Union suspended itself and by 1936 a decision had been taken not to re-establish it. Following World War II, the International Mathematical Union was formally re-founded in 1951 and its statutes and by-laws were drawn up in 1952. It had only one official language, namely English, and it was seen as an American dominated organisation.
The situation in Europe following World War II was a very difficult one. There was much devastation but this was easier to put right than the tensions between people who had been fighting each other. In these years [2]:-
... French political and intellectual elites were still playing the game of pre-WWII Europe and looking at Germany and its central European hinterland with suspicion and distrust. After 1945, to a deeply rooted anti-German feeling they added intense misgivings towards Anglophone cultural imperialism. Even if in the early 1960s De Gaulle started the Franco-German construction of the European Union, France was still trying to preserve a super-power status and a prominent position for French as an international language of science.In Italy the situation was even more complex. The Italian physicist Enrico Persico (1900-1969) wrote to Alessandro Terracini, who lost his chair in Turin because of the racial laws of 1938 and had spent the war years in Argentina, in August 1946 explaining the situation in Italy [1]:-
.. unfortunately the new government has not spared us disappointments: for example the astonishing amnesty, which has put back into circulation common criminals [and] some politicians who were roundups and torturers, except those whose tortures were particularly brutal. ... And the alleged aim of "pacifying the country" has not been achieved at all, because many people are indignant, and every now and then someone of the amnestied is summarily executed, while on the other hand the Fascists have taken it as a dutiful although incomplete repentance, reoccupying their old positions and demanding back wages. But this is a month old story: today new very severe measures are announced eh!! (it will be the 50th time) ...Already by 1949 there were discussions about a Union of Latin Mathematicians. In January of that year Julio Rey Pastor, who was in Madrid, wrote to Alessandro Terracini, now back in Italy, about ongoing discussions about a Union of Latin Mathematicians project. Funding was a problem but, perhaps more fundamentally, there were arguments over language and there was opposition to an equal role between France and Italy.Julio Rey Pastor, Alessandro Terracini, Giovanni Sansone, Marshall Stone and Enrico Bompiani were all part of these discussions. We note that at this stage, 1949, Bompiani was president of the Italian Mathematical Union, Sansone was its vice-president, and Terracini was a member of its Scientific Committee. By August of 1949 Marshall Stone was asking Giovanni Sansone about the relation between a Union of Latin Mathematicians and an International Mathematical Union which he hoped would soon be re-founded. Stone said there were dangers in bringing about two international unions. Sansone, however, wrote [1]:-
As for the dangers Stone points out for the International Mathematical Union, I think his concerns are certainly overblown ... The Union of Latin Mathematicians should not (and could not) compete with the International Mathematical Union. It has much more limited aims, both in scope and in depth ... Overall, I tell you that Stone's attitude in these matters gives me the impression of wanting to safeguard in a somewhat excessive way the predominant organisational position of the United States. ...Still in 1949, the Italians continued to exchange letters about Stone's comments on language in mathematics [1]:-
Stone says that he is of the opinion that the use of languages in mathematics should be reduced to a minimum (just as today American mathematicians reduce their style, their way of expressing themselves, and so on, to a single form, and if you read one of their works, very often you have to go and look up the name of the author, because otherwise you can't guess it; but if you read even a line, let's say just by Fubini, you understand immediately who wrote it); even if the principle were acceptable, there is no reason to exclude Italian from that minimum.In 1950 the International Congress of Mathematicians took place in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Julio Rey Pastor, Giovanni Sansone, Enrico Bompiani, Alessandro Terracini, Arnaud Denjoy, Paul Montel, Gaston Julia, and Henri Cartan, were all present at the Congress and discussions continued regarding a Union of Latin Mathematicians. Soon afterwards, however, the International Mathematical Union was re-founded and, at least for a while, the Latin Union was put on hold.
In 1954 the project resurfaced with a correspondence between Denjoy and Rey Pastor regarding a Union of Latin Mathematicians. Rey Pastor wrote [2]:-
Don't you think it would be the right time to bring back the old project of the Latin Mathematical Union which had been given up because of the constitution of the International Union? If the French agree as well (the Italians and the Belgians already do), we could draft a new project, simpler than the one I had written in 1950, in order to submit it to our colleagues during the Amsterdam meeting that I intend to attend.The Amsterdam meeting referred to in this quote is the second General Assembly of the International Mathematical Union held 31 August - 1 September 1954. For the rest of this article we closely follow the text of [2].
In October 1955, at the Pavia meeting of the Italian Mathematical Union, by agreement of representatives from the Italian Mathematical Union, the Société Mathématique de France and the Centre Belge de Recherches Mathématiques, there took shape the organisation of a first Réunion des Mathématiciens d'expression latine to he held in 1957. The representatives included André Marchaud (1887-1973), André Lichnerowicz, Lucien Godeaux (1887-1975), Enrico Bompiani, and Giovanni Sansone. A Comité international d'organization, chaired by André Marchaud, was set up to organise the 1957 Réunion, which eventually took place in Nice, France. Here is the Announcement:
Meeting of Latin-Speaking Mathematicians.
On the initiative of the Italian Mathematical Union and the French Mathematical Society, and with the support of the Municipality of Nice, a Meeting of Latin-Speaking Mathematicians will take place from 12 to 19 September 1957, at the Mediterranean University Centre in Nice.
This meeting will take the form of a "Colloquium" comprising nine lectures by invitation, on subjects chosen from the following fields:
- Differential geometry and topology.
- Algebra and algebraic geometry.
- Partial differential equations.
- Probability and mathematical physics.
Apart from the planned lectures and the discussions that will follow them, the meeting will not include any communication.
Mathematicians wishing to participate in this meeting are requested to contact the secretariat of the meeting as soon as possible; more precise information will then be provided to them, particularly concerning the material conditions of the stay.
A registration fee of one thousand francs (1,000 francs) per person will be requested (postal checking account 5215 Paris, in the name of the Société Mathématiques de France, 11, Rue Pierre-Curie, Paris, 5e).
Address of the secretariat, until 31 July 1957: Réunion des Mathématiciens d'Expression Latine, Société Mathématiques de France, 11, Rue Pierre-Curie, Paris, 5e.
from 1 August to 19 September 1957: Réunion des Mathématiciens d'Expression Latine, Centre Universitaire Méditerranéen, 65, Promenade des Anglais, Nice (Alpes Maritimes).
Planned lectures:
Opening ceremony:
P Montel: Historical lecture.
José Adem: Cohomological operations of the higher order.
B Eckmann: Homology and duality.
F Gaeta: On the effective decomposition of an algebraic variety based on the calculation of the forms associated with the irreducible components.
P Gillis: Properties of the solutions of certain classes of partial differential equations of the elliptic type.
M L'Abbé: Algebraic structures suggested by mathematical logic.
C Miranda: On some aspects of the theory of partial differential equations of the elliptic type.
M Zaluar-Nunes: Title not received.
B Segre: Recent prospects in the theory of correspondences.
S Stoilow: Some recent extensions of the notion of an analytic function of a complex variable of a geometric nature.
Closing session:
F Severi: Today's mathematics.
During the Nice meeting the statutes of a new formal, permanent organisation, the Groupement des mathématiciens d'expression latine were voted and approved by unanimity. Its main task was to organise every four years meetings of mathématiciens d'expression latine, and this was to be done so as not to interfere with the International Mathematical Union inspired International Congresses of Mathematicians.
A close look at the 1957 Nice Réunion reveals the main features of the first meetings of mathematicians of "Latin" expression. It gathered between 140 and 150 mathematicians coming not only "from all Latin countries" (toute la latinité) but also from "friendly countries wherein Latin languages are still honoured by scientists" - In total, they came from 14 countries, including Poland, Yugoslavia, Israel, Switzerland and Canada; only Mexico was represented among the Latino-American countries, although Brazil showed political support for it. The French delegation was the strongest one numerically (53 people) as well as by the distinguished mathematicians it included - among them, Gustave Choquet, Paul Montel, Gaston Julia, André Lichnerowicz, and Henri Cartan. The Italian delegation, with 43 mathematicians, was also noticeable. Honorary invitations were sent to Duro Kurepa, Charles de La Vallée-Poussin, José-Luis Massera, Heinz Hopf, and Luís Santaló. The meeting was supported by the French Foreign Office (Ministère des Affaires Étrangères) and patronised by distinguished institutions, including the Haut Patronage of the Presidency of the Republic. As André Marchaud put it, the meeting was "riche des parrainages officiels les plus flatteurs."
French mathematicians played an important role first in the organization of the Nice meeting, and then in setting up the Groupement and making it work. They also were for obvious reasons the natural leaders in most of the mathematical fields and discussions held in the meetings. French was the lingua franca of the meetings and of the Groupement, and the language in which most of the papers discussed in the first three meetings (held in Nice, France (1957), Florence-Bologna, Italy (1961), and Namur, Belgium (1965)) were published. The very structure of these meetings highlighted the presence of distinguished mathematicians (mostly from France but also from Poland and Switzerland, Italy and Belgium) whose presentations were given pride of place. With very few exceptions, participants came from Europe, with France (and Italy and Belgium in second and third positions) providing most of the participants, always more than 65% of the total numbers and sometimes even more than 80 per cent. By their participation, their structure, their speakers, and their patrons, the first meetings as well as the Groupement of "Latin" mathematicians were a political platform to call for international attention and to build up an international mathematical community under French leadership.
This state of affairs, however, was to change dramatically from the late 1960s onwards. By 1981, the sixth meeting (which was then called the VIe Congrès) held in Luxembourg, had the structure of any standard international congress, with some invited lectures but with a programme mostly filled up by short non-invited talks. Participants came mostly from Spain (49 out of a total of 185). Out of a total of 74 talks, Spaniards gave 25. France (17 participants), had a similar presence as Italy (19), Belgium (17), Luxembourg (23), Mexico (13), and francophone Africa (14). The numbers of talks given by French and Italian mathematicians were modest, 5 and 9 respectively, and they did not come from prestigious mathematicians. The French language had lost its privileged status, as many talks were given in the national languages of the participants, including Portuguese, Spanish and Catalan. The meetings and the Groupement of "Latin" Mathematicians had evidently lost their raison d'être. The last meeting was held in Coimbra in 1985. The Groupement voted its self-dissolution shortly afterwards.
References (show)
- L Giacardi, Alessandro Terracini (1889-1968): Da Torino a Torino, Department of Mathematics, Academy of Sciences (19 April 2018).
https://www.corradosegre.unito.it/doc/slideaccscito.pdf - A Malet, Cold War geopolitics and French mathematicians: The Groupement des mathématiciens d'expression latine (1957-1985), in Antonin Durand, Laurent Mazliak and Rossana Tazzioli (eds.), Des mathématiciens et des guerres: Histoires de confrontations (XIXe-XXe siècle) (CMRS, 2013), 111-122.
Last Updated March 2025