BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Making a name in mid-century mathematics: individuals\, institutio
 ns and the open secret of Nicolas Bourbaki - Michael Barany (University of
  Edinburgh)
DTSTART:20191017T120000Z
DTEND:20191017T130000Z
UID:TALK132025@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Richard Staley
DESCRIPTION:In 1948\, the American Mathematical Society received an applic
 ation for membership from Nicolas Bourbaki\, the pen name of a radical gro
 up of French mathematicians then rewriting the foundations of modern mathe
 matics. While that application was quietly dismissed\, a second applicatio
 n a year later and the correspondence it provoked together expose signific
 ant fault lines beneath the Americans' efforts to lead an international di
 scipline in the wake of World War II. This article draws on a wide range o
 f archival sources to situate Bourbaki's applications amidst the distincti
 ve ways mathematicians established subjective identities in interaction wi
 th professional institutions in the mid-20th century. I show how Bourbaki'
 s advocates parodied the period's norms of identification\, exploiting new
 ly important ambiguities and challenging newly reconfigured power structur
 es in mathematicians' postwar disciplinary practice. The group's status as
  an open secret allowed its members to take special advantage of their new
  disciplinary circumstances while propounding an aggressively transgressiv
 e intellectual programme. I close by developing a tension – between indi
 viduals and institutions – made more or less explicit in Bourbaki's appl
 ications and the responses to it\, which sheds new light on recent underst
 andings of subjectivity and embodiment in the history and sociology of mod
 ern science.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR