The Mathematical Intelligencer

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The Mathematical Intelligencer

description German mathematics journal
publishing company Springer Science + Business Media (DE)
First edition 1978
Frequency of publication quarterly

The Mathematical Intelligencer is a mathematics journal published four times a year by Springer Verlag since 1978 , which is dedicated to popular science and subject-related topics for a broader mathematical audience. She has a letters to the editor column, offers mathematical articles, book reviews, mathematical travel reports (Mathematical Tourist), interviews, anecdotes, memories and mathematical folklore, humor and poetry, mathematics in the arts and over the years has had various columns, for example on the history of mathematics , subject-related ( Mathematical Communities) and Entertaining Mathematics .

In the course of time there were debates, among other things, about Serge Lang's campaigns (against Samuel P. Huntington , in the magazine represented by Neal Koblitz and Herbert A. Simon at the end of 1988), about the question of the publication of critical articles against Igor Shafarevich (on the occasion of a interviews reprinted 1989) or Benoît Mandelbrot's response to a critical review by Steven G. Krantz (1989). In 1994 a debate took place in the Mathematical Intelligencer about the validity of Wu-Yi Hsiang's attempt to prove the Kepler conjecture. In 1998 Stephen Smale published his list of Smale problems .

Before it was first published as a magazine, it had a history in the form of a newsletter published by Alice and Klaus Peters (who were at Springer until 1979 and later founded their own mathematics publishing house A K Peters ) and Walter Kaufmann-Bühler (1944–1986), all three was published at the time in the mathematics division of Springer Verlag. It was initially sent to 12,000 recipients as a sales support for Springer Verlag and has already appeared four times a year. In addition, they published special editions for the International Congress of Mathematicians, first in Helsinki in 1978, where the idea of ​​founding their own magazine format arose. The name Intelligencer is a formerly more common name of magazines in the Anglo-Saxon region.

The editors were first Harold Edwards and Bruce Chandler (the founding editors), then John Ewing (1979–1986), Sheldon Axler (1987–1991), Chandler Davis (from 1991) and Marjorie Senechal (from 2004 co-editor with Davis).

literature

  • Mathematical Intelligencer. Volume 30, No. 1, 2008, No. 1 (for the 30th anniversary)
  • Robin Wilson , Jeremy Gray (Eds.) Mathematical Conversations: Selections from The Mathematical Intelligencer. Springer, 2001