The edition of Bernhard Riemann’s collected works: Then and now

Emmylou Haffner (1)

1 SPHERE UMR 7219 - Sciences, Philosophie, Histoire

Bernhard Riemann's collected works were published for the first time in 1876 by Richard Dedekind and Heinrich Weber. The editors' correspondence and the available archive tell us that the process of editing Riemann's collected works was a hands-on process, which is itself of historical and mathematical significance. In this paper, we show how the editors shaped the published texts, and how this can influence our reading of them. A complex history and a wealth of archive In 1876 were published Bernhard Riemann's (1826-1866) Gesammelte mathematische Werke und wissenschaftlicher Nachlass (Collected mathematical works and scientific archive). These collected works were edited by Heinrich Weber (1842-1913) and Richard Dedekind (1831-1916) and published by B. G. Teubner. 1 Riemann and Dedekind met while they were Gauss' students in Göttingen. They defended their doctoral dissertation within a year of each other (Riemann in 1851 and Dedekind in 1852), and their respective Habilitation with only a few days difference in 1854. Following this, they both worked as Privatdozenten in Göttingen, during which time Dedekind followed Riemann's classes. In 1858 Dedekind was offered a position in Zürich and Riemann a post in Göttingen, and they remained friends until Riemann's untimely death in 1866.

Domaines: Histoire, Philosophie et Sociologie des sciences; Histoire et perspectives sur les mathématiques [math.HO]

Emmylou Haffner. The edition of Bernhard Riemann’s collected works: Then and now. European Mathematical Society Magazine, 2021, 120, pp.29 - 39. ⟨10.4171/mag-18⟩. ⟨halshs-03513267⟩