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Note: We thank the European Mathematical Society for allowing us to reproduce this Brief History, first published in their Newsletter #29 (September 1998).
As I write, I have in front of me two thick notebooks, handwritten between 1921
and 1946 as minutes of the meetings of the Belgian Mathematical Society.
(*)
These provide an interesting and nostalgic view of the birth
of the Society and of the context of mathematical research at the time.
The first page is dated 14.3.1921, and presents the decision
to create a ``Mathematical Circle where all questions concerning pure and
applied mathematics would be considered, by lectures, communications and
discussion'' (all the quotes here are loose translations of the original
French text).
Nine people were present, the best known being Th. De Donder, L.
Godeaux and A. Errera.
The next meeting gathered 22 members for adoption of temporary
rules and two lectures, by A. Errera and Th. De Donder. The official statutes
were adopted in November and the name ``Circle'' was replaced by ``Society''in
January 1922. In these early days also Henri Bosmans was
involved. Paul Van Praag (president of the BMS 1986--88) has written a note on
this. It is in French and can be found here.
Here are some excerpts of the statutes.
Article 2: ``The aim of the Society is to contribute to progress and diffusion of mathematics in Belgium. It is concerned with mathematics, pure and applied, in the broadest sense. It will try to establish a permanent link between secondary school and university''.
Presumably, these aims could be expressed today in the same way, and the relations between pure and applied mathematics, or between the different levels of teaching remain present day questions.
Article 3 states that there will be a meeting every month (except August
and September), and article 7 that the membership fee is 10 francs (one
quarter of an ecu) for members living in Brussels, but 5 francs (one eight
of a euro) for the others !
These articles survived changes in the statutes in 1923 and 1936. To
my knowledge, they were not officially modified before ... 1998. The fact is
that nobody bothered about the statutes (or knew about them) --- even when
the monthly meetings vanished for lack of participants in the seventies,or
when the membership fee rose to the (still cheap) amount of 600 francs (the
same for everyone !).
The last article specifies that in case of termination of the
society, ``the assets are given to the poor''.
Note that the sentence ``l'avoir est remis aux pauvres'', means
to all the poor --- no definition or algorithm being given
to identify them.
At the time, the Society didn't start a journal, but its records
appear in brief supplements of a journal of the period : Mathesis.
The handwritten minutes describe for every meeting the topic of
the lecture and summarize the discussion. Most of the lectures were given
by Belgian mathematicians, and it is interesting that they felt the need
for these monthly contacts, and maintained them for many years.
Some foreign speakers were of course also invited.
Quite regularly, lectures were supplemented by reports on results
announced in international congresses, where one (but maybe only one) member
was able to go.
Two aspects are striking.
Those monthly meetings were maintained throughout a long period
(except during World War 2), and this must reflect a time when information
did not flow easily and when meetings were fairly rare.
The subjects treated were extremely varied - and in fact established
links between pure and applied mathematics, and between university and
secondary school, in a way forgotten today.
Indeed, we find lectures on mathematical physics (with e.g. De
Donder), astrophysics (Lemaître), algebraic geometry (Godeaux), analysis
(De la Vallée - Poussin, Lepage), engineering (van den Dungen), mathematics
of insurance, and secondary school mathematics (with A. Mineur --- sharply
remembered by generations of Belgian schoolchildren for his treatise on
descriptive geometry).
Amongst foreign speakers, let me just pick two curios.
On top of various lectures on integration, Lebesgue gave a talk
in 1925 on ruler and compass constructions.
In 1922, Millikan gave a lecture, comparing his ideas
on the electron with those of Planck and De Donder. The minutes specify
that he was asked a question by Henriot on the capacity of the electron to
spin --- and that he didn't know the answer.
The notebooks end in June 1946. I don't know if further books
were lost or if records were interrupted. This is possible because the
Society started the publication of its Bulletin the following year.
The first volume of the ``Bulletin de la Société Mathématique de
Belgique'' --- a single issue of 46 pages --- appeared in 1947-48, but is not
called number 1, maybe because it was unclear whether others would follow.
In fact, the numbering starts only with volume 6 in 1953.
Again in 1947, Guy Hirsch was elected deputy secretary, the first
step of his lifelong involvement with the Society.
Hirsch, a top class topologist (think of the Leray-Hirsch theorem) and
philosopher of science, became so active in the Society that for many years
one could say he was the Society.
Indeed, from 1953 to 1993, the official address of the Society
was that of his apartment, from which he handled all the administration
with the help of his wife and son, acting both as secretary and treasurer.
The Bulletin had a small editorial board from 1951 to 1955,
but it dissolved that year, leaving Guy Hirsch with the full control of
the edition of the Bulletin --- a situation that lasted until 1977 ! After that,
the Bulletin was split in two series, Hirsch keeping full editorial control
of the first one until his death in 1993.
Singlehandedly, he managed to develop the Society, thanks to
his huge mathematical culture and his patient work.
A curio for this period is a paper of Lucien Godeaux: Les
recherches mathématiques en Belgique dans ces dernières années,(1949-50)
pp. 32-40, in which he lists what he sees as the best work of the time in Belgium.
I imagine that if such a paper were contemplated today, a committee
would sit for two years arguing about choices and get nothing written.
In the seventies, the situation began to change. The monthly
meetings vanished for lack of participants --- they simply did not fit the
needs of the mathematicians anymore.
The mathematical community wanted to take more part in the Society,
hence the second series of the Bulletin, started by A. Warrinnier and continued by
Y. Felix and J.-P. Tignol, with a strict system of editorial board.
P. Henrard then J. Leroy, and S. Caenepeel as treasurer, took
the task of transforming the very personal secretarial system of G. Hirsch (all
the exchange programme of the Bulletin for 30 years used only 2 pages, filled
with color dots) into a well regulated computerized system.
In the eighties, an annual meeting was launched, and met with
great success at the beginning. But again, after a few years, attendance
diminished. In the hectic schedule of university people between teaching,
research and administration, between numerous specialized meetings, large
international conferences, such nonspecialized national meetings obviously
had no priority, and the Society went looking for another formula.
Since 1994, the Society has a new series of its Bulletin, coming from
the merger of the two series and of another journal, Simon Stevin (globalization
is everywhere in Europe). It works according to a strict refereeing process, and
papers on all mathematical subjects can be sent to the main editor,
Hendrik Van Maldeghem <bull.bms@cage.rug.ac.be>.
The Bulletin publishes 5 issues per year, and on average one
supplement.
In collaboration with the National Committee for Mathematics, the
Society also runs a Newsletter for its members, and its electronic version
on the Society's web site is updated in real time.
A rebirth of the congresses came with the start of a series of
joint meetings. The first one with the American, Dutch and Luxemburg
mathematical societies brought 500 mathematicians in Antwerp in 1996 (an all
time record for Belgium).
One, with the London Mathematical Society took place
in Brussels on May 14-16, 1999.
In 2001, Liège hosted a joint meeting with the Deutsche Mathematiker
Vereinigung (DMV).
If there is some lesson to draw from this brief overview, it is
probably that when situations change, mathematical societies must adapt. In
that sense the B.M.S. today plays its role as it did in 1921 --- but this role
has changed. A modern structure remains modern only for a period.
A Society's function is largely about communication, and nothing
changes faster today than communication. Certainly, chapter 4 of this story
will concern every mathematical publisher, and will be about the impact and
good use of the possibilities of electronic publishing. An evolution will
take place, but I doubt if anybody could describe with certainty the situation
that we shall know in 20 years.
Anyway, we are still in the middle of this chapter 3
(*) These notebooks are kept in the Fond Hirsch,
a section of the Bibliothèque de l'Institut de Statistique et Recherche
Opérationnelle de l'U. L. B. (Campus Plaine, bâtiment
NO, 9e étage, tel. 32 (0)2 650.58.98). Because they are unique manuscripts,
they can't be removed from the library, where a Xerox machine is available.