10 Preface

H. Reichardt (the Mathematical Institute of the Humboldt University in Berlin),

Professor A. P. Sugkevid (Institute for the History of the Natural Sciences and
Technology of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow), and Professor
V. Kofinek (director of the Mathematical Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy
of Sciences in Prague).
I owe my very deepest thanks to my wife.

Leipzig, April 1965

Discussions of the manuscript of this book by a small number of colleagues in

my country and abroad have shown that there is a great deal of interest in its
subject and have strengthened my hope that this study, already completed in 1965,
will contribute to a broad discussion of the aims, the methods, and the very sub ject
of mathematical historiography and of its relation of the natural sciences. In this
connection I wish to pay tribute to the memory of my prematurely deceased teacher
Gerhard Hang for many varied and fruitful suggestions and for the great and
constant interest that he took in this work.
The printing of the book was made possible by the unfailing cooperation of
the VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften and especially its editor-in-chief
Mr. L. Boll. Thanks are also due to VEB lectors Mrs. B. Mai, Dipl.-Math., and
Miss E. Arndt, Dipl.-Math., to Mrs. T. Gedlich and Mrs. J. Greschuchna of the
Karl Sudhoff Institute for the History of Medicine and the Natural Sciences of
the Karl Marx University in Leipzig, and to Mrs. I. Letzel, librarian of the Mathe-
matical Institute of the Karl Marx University in Leipzig.

Leipzig, fall 1968