The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU).
The Fields Medals, the IMU Abacus Medal (known before 2022 as the Nevanlinna Prize), the Gauss Prize, and the Chern Medal are awarded during the congress's opening ceremony. Each congress is memorialized by a printed set of Proceedings recording academic papers based on invited talks intended to be relevant to current topics of general interest. Being invited to talk at the ICM has been called "the equivalent ... of an induction to a hall of fame".
History
320px|thumb|The 1932 International Congress of Mathematicians in [[Zürich, Switzerland]]
German mathematicians Felix Klein and Georg Cantor are credited with putting forward the idea of an international congress of mathematicians in the 1890s.
The University of Chicago, which had opened in 1892, organized an International Mathematical Congress at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, where Felix Klein participated as the official German representative.
The first official International Congress of Mathematicians was held in Zürich in August 1897. The organizers included such prominent mathematicians as Luigi Cremona, Felix Klein, Gösta Mittag-Leffler, Andrey Markov, and others. The congress was attended by 208 mathematicians from 16 countries,
including more than 100 from Switzerland or Germany,
around 20 from each of France, Italy, and Austria-Hungary,
13 from the Russian Empire and 7 from the US.
At the 1904 ICM Gyula Kőnig delivered a lecture where he claimed that Georg Cantor's famous continuum hypothesis was false. An error in Kőnig's proof was discovered by Ernst Zermelo soon thereafter. Kőnig's announcement at the congress caused considerable uproar, and Klein had to personally explain to the Grand Duke of Baden (who was a financial sponsor of the congress) what could cause such an unrest among mathematicians.
For the 1950 ICM in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Laurent Schwartz, one of the Fields Medalists for that year, and Jacques Hadamard, both of whom were viewed by the U.S. authorities as communist sympathizers, were only able to obtain U.S. visas after the personal intervention of President Harry Truman.
The first woman to give an ICM plenary lecture, at the 1932 congress in Zürich, was Emmy Noether.
The 1998 congress was attended by 3,346 participants. The American Mathematical Society reported that more than 4,500 participants attended the 2006 conference in Madrid, Spain. The King of Spain presided over the 2006 conference opening ceremony. The 2010 Congress took place in Hyderabad, India, on August 19–27, 2010. The ICM 2014 was held in Seoul, South Korea, on August 13–21, 2014. The 2018 Congress took place in Rio de Janeiro on August 1–9, 2018.
ICMs and the International Mathematical Union
The organizing committees of the early ICMs were formed in large part on an ad hoc basis and there was no single body continuously overseeing the ICMs.
Following the end of World War I, the Allied Powers established in 1919 in Brussels the International Research Council (IRC). At the IRC's instructions, in 1920 the Union Mathematique Internationale (UMI) was created. No Soviet mathematicians participated in the 1936 ICM, although a number of invitations were extended to them. At the 1950 ICM there were again no participants from the Soviet Union, although quite a few were invited. Similarly, no representatives of other Eastern Bloc countries, except for Yugoslavia, participated in the 1950 congress. Andrey Kolmogorov had been appointed to the Fields Medal selection committee for the 1950 congress, but did not participate in the committee's work. However, in a famous episode, a few days before the end of the 1950 ICM, the congress' organizers received a telegram from Sergei Vavilov, President of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The telegram thanked the organizers for inviting Soviet mathematicians but said that they are unable to attend "being very much occupied with their regular work", and wished success to the congress's participants. However, the IMU insisted that the decisions regarding invited speakers and Fields medalists be kept under exclusive jurisdiction of the ICM committees appointed for that purpose by the IMU. || Finland
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| 2018 || Rio de Janeiro || Brazil
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| 2014 || Seoul || South Korea
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| 2010 || Hyderabad || India
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| 2006 || Madrid || Spain
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| 2002 || Beijing || China
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| 1998 || Berlin || Germany
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| 1994 || Zürich || Switzerland
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| 1990 || Kyoto || Japan
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| 1986 || Berkeley || United States
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| 1982 || Warsaw || Poland
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| 1978 || Helsinki || Finland
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| 1974 || Vancouver || Canada
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| 1970 || Nice || France
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| 1966 || Moscow || Soviet Union
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| 1962 || Stockholm || Sweden
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| 1958 || Edinburgh || United Kingdom
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| 1954 || Amsterdam || Netherlands
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| 1950 || Cambridge, Massachusetts || United States
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| 1936 || Oslo || Norway
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| 1932 || Zürich || Switzerland
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| 1928 || Bologna || Italy
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| 1924 || Toronto || Canada
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| 1920 || Strasbourg || France
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| 1912 || Cambridge || United Kingdom
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| 1908 || Rome || Italy
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| 1904 || Heidelberg || German Empire
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| 1900 || Paris || France
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| 1897 || Zürich || Switzerland
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See also
- List of International Congresses of Mathematicians Plenary and Invited Speakers
References
Further reading
- Guillermo Curbera. Mathematicians of the World, Unite!: The International Congress of Mathematicians: A Human Endeavor AK Peters, 2009.
- Olli Lehto. Mathematics without borders: a history of the International Mathematical Union Springer-Verlag, 1998.
- Donald J. Albers, Gerald L. Alexanderson, Constance Reid. International Mathematical Congresses: An Illustrated History, 1893–1986, Springer-Verlag, 1986.
- Yousef Alavi, Peter Hilton and Jean Pedersen. "Let's Meet at the Congress" American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 93, No. 1 (Jan., 1986), pp. 3–8
External links
- International Mathematical Congress: held in connection with the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago
- International Mathematical Union: Proceedings 1893–2014
- ICM 1998 Berlin
- ICM 2002 Beijing
- ICM 2006 Madrid
- ICM 2010 Berlin
- ICM 2014 Seoul
- ICM 2018 Rio de Janeiro
- ICM 2022 Virtual and Helsinki