Norwegian Mathematical Society
The Norwegian Mathematical Society (Norsk Matematisk Forening, NMF) was founded in 1918 on the initiative of the professor of actuarial mathematics Arnfinn Palmstrøm (1867-1922), who was also its first secretary and was able to secure funding from domestic insurance companies. In addition to actuaries and university teachers, teachers, students and geodesists were among its members. The founding members also included professors Carl Størmer (its first president), Richard Birkeland (1879–1928) and the Dane Poul Heegaard (president from 1928 to 1935 and professor in Oslo). Its headquarters have been in Trondheim since 2003 .
Despite a considerable mathematical tradition, with mathematicians such as Niels Henrik Abel , Sophus Lie , Ludwig Sylow , the mathematical audience in Norway was too small to found their own society in the 19th century. Not least due to the efforts of the society, the environment changed and in the 20th century such well-known mathematicians as Viggo Brun (President of the NMF from 1951 to 1953), Trygve Nagell , Atle Selberg , Øystein Ore , Thoralf Skolem , Ernst Sejersted Selmer left Norway , Axel Thue .
From 1919 the society had its own mathematical journal, the Norsk Matematisk Tidskrift , which was published by Heegaard. It went up in 1952 with other journals in the two pan-Scandinavian journals Nordisk Matematisk Tidskrift and Mathematica Scandinavica . In addition to the series of journals, there was a series of publications by Norsk Matematisk Forenings Skrifter für Monographien, which only existed until the 1930s.
The society also published the collected works of Sophus Lie from 1920, in seven volumes until 1960, with Friedrich Engel and Heegaard as the initial editors.
The company is involved in various competitions for schoolchildren, the best known is the Abel competition, sponsored by the telecommunications company Telenor. The winners take part in the International Mathematical Olympiad.
Since the 1960s they have been organizing a seminar in January under the motto Ski and Mathematics .
They have an INFOMAT newsletter that is accessible online.
The NMF regularly organizes a symposium as part of the Abel Prize , which was founded in 2002 for the 200th birthday of Abel and is considered a kind of Nobel Prize in Mathematics. A large conference was held in Oslo for the 2002 Abel commemorative year.