26/01/2018

Folha: Poincaré and Oscar II, the king who loved mathematics

King Oscar II of Sweden and Norway celebrated his 60th birthday on January 21, 1889, but preparations began long before. Oscar II (1929-1907) was no ordinary monarch: he had studied mathematics in college and became a patron of the science, even sponsoring the creation of a scientific journal, "Acta Mathematica," which remains one of the most prestigious in the world to this day.

Among his advisors was the mathematician Gösta Mittag-Leffler (1846-1927), elegant, cultured, and a bon vivant, who married one of Sweden's richest heiresses and happily spent his father-in-law's money. Therefore, the king's decision to mark the anniversary with a mathematical prize is hardly surprising, although it is unusual, unfortunately.

The prize, a gold medal and 2,500 Swedish kronor (about 4 months' salary for a university professor), would go to the best solution to a research question in mathematical analysis. In addition, the work would be published in "Acta Mathematica".

Mittag-Leffler was put in charge of presiding over the jury and wasted no time in turning the situation into an opportunity for self-promotion.

Initially, the jury was to consist of five mathematicians: one Swede (Mittag-Leffler), one French or Belgian, one German or Austrian, one English or American, and one Russian or Italian. This distribution says a lot about the geopolitics of mathematics at the time.

But communication difficulties – distances, languages, jealousy – made the plan unfeasible, and Mittag-Leffler had to settle for a smaller jury: besides him, there were the Frenchman Charles Hermite (1822-1901) and the German Karl Weierstrass (1815-1897), two of the greatest mathematicians of the 19th century.

The competition was announced in "Acta Mathematica" in 1885, and difficulties arose immediately. The German Leopold Kronecker (1823-1891), Weierstrass's rival, offended at being overlooked, created all sorts of controversies.

Mittag-Leffler tried to calm him down, explaining that Weierstrass had been chosen because he was older. We don't know if he gave the same explanation to Weierstrass…

The rules stated that each submitted work should be identified only by a phrase in Latin, accompanied by a sealed envelope containing the phrase and the author's name. Of course, since the works were handwritten, anonymity was relative. The jury immediately recognized the work of the Frenchman Henri Poincaré: besides having an unmistakable style, Poincaré hadn't read the rules properly and identified the work with his own name!

Good mathematicians can be easily distracted people…

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