BRICS Mathematics: Histories and agendas of mathematics in the context of ‘large emerging economies’

Part of ICMS Programme Mathematics for Humanity

Organizers: Michael Barany (University of Edinburgh, UK), Valeria de Paiva (Topos Institute, USA)

With members of the SIGMA project team:

  • Alkisti Kallinikou
  • Jan Vrhovski
  • J.P. Ascher

This seminar series will bring together experts on historical and contemporary mathematics in BRICS countries to assemble a state of the field and to promote comparative and integrative conversations that can inform future research and initiatives. Contributions and findings will be made available as resources to the mathematical and historical research communities, and the seminar will be designed to promote cross-national as well as interdisciplinary collaborations and dialogues.

Three main clusters of questions will animate these conversations:

Schedule

Seminars will begin in April 2025, details to be announced.

Goals

Comparisons and Connections

We aim to understand the history and contemporary development of mathematical research in BRICS countries with an emphasis on comparisons and connections. This will involve presentations from researchers who have examined aspects of mathematics in the respective countries in national and international contexts, including connections between BRICS countries. We will assemble a state of the field on the history of the planning, support, conduct, dissemination, evaluation, and mobilisation of mathematical research in relevant institutional, national, and international contexts. Rigorous comparisons will support identifications of aspects of these histories that are distinctive to BRICS countries or common or divergent among them, and will elucidate the wider significance of these findings for the global history of mathematics and for the future planning and development of mathematics in and beyond BRICS settings.

Measures and Values

Participants in international mathematical communities have long had to grapple with the geopolitical and economic conditions of mathematical research. While mathematics research is in many respects rather inexpensive and adaptable, participation in international research has historically required large investments in personnel, research sites, travel, libraries and communication, and other requirements. These dimensions have been significant areas of cooperation and competition among BRICS countries (Soviet programmes to produce inexpensive advanced mathematical textbooks, for example) and between BRICS countries and other nations and international institutions. Mathematical communities, especially ones sustained over long distances, can be very expensive indeed, compounded by network effects that reinforce the intellectual and institutional centrality of sites and subcommunities with the most resource-intensive capacity for supporting mathematical collaboration.

Transformations and Futures

Historically and in the present, measurements of national and international mathematics have typically come with a purpose: to support improvements in those measures, and in the status of mathematics in the contexts evaluated. Here, measurement is and has always been a mechanism of transformation and a way of staking claims on the future.

By linking historical and contemporary questions about mathematics in BRICS countries, the seminar will contribute to understandings of past transformations and future possibilities for mathematics. We will identify strategies, processes, and constraints on reconfigurations of national and international mathematics regimes and on changes in the national role and international standing of mathematics communities. Historical comparisons will enrich accounts of the decisions and dynamics of change and their relationship to economic and political goals and conditions in host countries, their regions, and their wider contexts.

Rationale and background

The BRICS countries are a group of five major emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. The term originated in 2001 (without South Africa) in the context of international development and investment finance, representing a collection of countries whose large populations, natural resources, and rapid economic growth poised them for future global economic importance. The grouping has remained a fixture of global finance analysis but has also become geopolitically significant, involving intergovernmental summits and strategies that extend beyond the economic origins of the monicker and will soon include formal participation from additional member states.

The qualities that make this grouping of countries interesting and challenging in the analysis of global politics and finance also, in different ways, make them interesting and challenging in the analysis of recent and contemporary mathematical research communities. These qualities include rapid growth, large concentrations of wealth mixed with significant poverty and inequality, government roles in competitive national education systems and large state-backed industrial enterprises, and histories of political isolation and engagement that have resulted in complex relationships between BRICS countries and traditional economic and mathematical centers in Europe and North America. From the perspective of the global history of recent and contemporary mathematics, the BRICS countries offer striking examples and comparisons regarding the relationship between government, military, politics, economics, mass and elite education, and academic and industrial research as conditions for important national and international systems of mathematical training and research.

China and India are, of course, known for illustrious mathematical traditions dating back many centuries, as well as important roles in modern mathematical sciences. Russia has been integrally connected to the forefront of Western European mathematics since at least the early days of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences, founded in 1724, with significant transformations in its role during the Soviet and post-Soviet eras. Brazil and South Africa have been very much a part of the theoretical and organizational story of modern mathematics, at smaller scales and subject to different conditions and dynamics. Yet a combination of factors has meant that these countries’ role in international and global mathematics do not appear proportionate to their much larger geopolitical significance, economies, and populations.

Modern mathematical research and training in BRICS countries has tended to involve intensive concentration of resources and personnel at elite and often internationally-oriented institutions, under a variety of models and reflecting a diversity of ideological and cultural bases. Mathematical research has been seen as important to security and economic interests, related to governance and education, and as a form of cultural attainment. In the context of national and global economic development, there is a complicated and as-yet insufficiently understood link between technological and industrial innovation and advanced mathematics in national and international settings, related to considerations of education, migration, workforce skills, technical infrastructure, and foundations for international cooperation and competition. In different ways, BRICS governments and leaders in education and industry have been key participants in international debates about mathematics education, numeracy, and development.

We aim to integrate historical research on respective BRICS countries and international institutions with discussions of future organisation and development of mathematics in these contexts to provide a comprehensive and comparative view of BRICS mathematics, and so to give a foundation for understanding some of the most significant transformations and challenges of the recent and contemporary mathematical eras.