奥托·纽格包尔Otto E. Neugebauer

奥托·纽格包尔的父亲Rudolf Neugebauer是一名铁路工程师。他母亲的名字不详。父母在纽格包尔年幼时双双去世，他由一位叔叔抚养长大。他在格拉茨的文理中学就读时对数学产生了兴趣，但在1917年，他加入奥地利军队担任炮兵中尉，以避免参加最终的学校考试。1918年战争结束，他成为意大利人的战俘。他被关押在意大利的一个战俘营中，同营的还有另一位后来享誉世界的奥地利人，即路德维希·维特根斯坦。

从战俘营获释后，纽格包尔四处辗转。1919年至1921年，他先在格拉茨大学学习电气工程和物理学，随后在慕尼黑大学跟随阿诺·索末菲学习数学和物理学。他于1922年在哥廷根定居，在那里开始了认真的数学研究，并与理查·科朗特、哈拉尔·玻尔和帕维尔·亚历山德罗夫成为朋友。他与哈拉尔·玻尔的友谊发展成了数学合作，他们合写了一篇关于殆周期函数的论文。这成了纽格包尔第一篇也是最后一篇纯粹数学论文，因为此时他的工作发生了明确的转向。

纽格包尔是一位语言专家，他研究过埃及语。因此，哈拉尔·玻尔请他的朋友评述一篇关于莱因德纸草书的出版物是很自然的。一旦开始研究这项工作，纽格包尔就意识到他想从事的领域是数学史。他联系了理查·科朗特和大卫·希尔伯特，询问能否以埃及单位分数的历史作为博士论文课题。他们同意指导这样一个项目，纽格包尔于1926年以此课题的学位论文获得了博士学位。

1927年，纽格包尔被任命为哥廷根的工作人员，并开始讲授古代数学史。参加这门首次课程的一名学生是巴特尔·伦德特·范德瓦尔登，因此他也对古代数学产生了兴趣，并一生中出版了具有重大意义的著作。

然而，1927年纽格包尔决定要研究巴比伦数学，为了能够这样做，他学习了阿卡德语，这是巴比伦人书写泥板所用的语言。巴比伦人在未烧制的黏土板上书写，使用楔形文字。符号是用笔的斜边压入软泥板中，因此呈楔形（故得名楔形文字）。许多泥板，最早的可追溯到约公元前1700年，保存了下来，纽格包尔知道它们被各个博物馆收藏，但当时几乎没有进行工作来研究它们并评估巴比伦的贡献。Gray在[4]中写道：-

纽格包尔 将在 20 世纪 30 年代中期出版他关于数学泥板的 3 卷文集。它们确立了巴比伦数学的巨大丰富性，远远超出人们从希腊或埃及文献中可能猜到的任何程度。

纽格包尔 参与的另一个项目是在哥廷根建造一座新的数学研究所。该研究所于 1929 年在洛克菲勒基金会的支持下建成，理查·科朗特 和 纽格包尔 共同领导该研究所直到 1932 年。然而，在此之前，纽格包尔 已经启动了两项项目中的第一项，这两项项目将成为任何人对数学所作出的最重要贡献之一。他说服 Springer-Verlag 出版一份评论所有数学出版物的期刊，以补充他们在其他主题上的评论期刊。1931 年，Zentralblatt für Matematik 第一期问世，由 纽格包尔 编辑。

Zentralblatt für Matematik 迅速成为所有数学家不可或缺的工具。然而，随着纳粹上台，德国的政治局势带来了彻底改变 纽格包尔 职业生涯进程的变化。正如 小拉尔夫·P·鲍亚士 在 [2] 中所写：-

他从一开始就反对德国的国家社会主义者，并因此被迫离开他的学术职位。

Davis [3] 回忆 纽格包尔 说：-

如果你从未听到过街上纳粹靴子在你下方发出的声音，你就无法理解那个时期的历史。

我确信纽格包尔是对的，然而他的原话或许能帮助我们稍微理解当时的情况。幸运的是，纽格包尔在哈拉尔·玻尔有一位好朋友，他邀请纽格包尔于1934年1月搬到哥本哈根大学。纽格包尔将Zentralblatt für Matematik的编辑部带到了哥本哈根，从1934年到1938年，Zentralblatt在那里继续蓬勃发展。然而，在整个这一时期，出版评论期刊的斗争变得更加困难，因为纳粹越来越试图影响该期刊的编辑方针。遗憾的是，一些优秀的数学家被纳粹思想所诱惑，像威海姆·布拉希开这样的数学家攻击了该期刊。

1938年，事情达到了顶点，[9] 威廉·聚斯坚持Springer-Verlag应该按照纳粹原则出版Zentralblatt für Matematik。在编辑委员会的图利奥·列维-齐维塔被解雇，纽格包尔与几乎整个编辑委员会一起辞职。纽格包尔销毁了该期刊的所有记录，除了累积索引。

纽格包尔是一位备受尊敬的数学史家，数学界无法承受失去这份仅几年内就变得不可或缺的评论期刊。奥斯瓦尔德·维布伦安排布朗大学向纽格包尔提供一个讲席，而美国数学会看到了支持纽格包尔创办一份新评论期刊的机会。纽格包尔乘船前往美国，[2]：-

……《Zentralblatt》的索引随纽格包尔一同到来，尽管美国海关几乎将其作为潜在颠覆性物品没收，但它保存至今。

在极短的时间内，纽格包尔就让Mathematical Reviews运转起来。该期刊开始评论1939年7月以后出现的文章，第一期于1940年1月出版。纽格包尔继续担任Mathematical Reviews的主编，直到1945年任命了一位全职执行主编。纽格包尔关于评论的方针很有意思。他[1]：-

……总是坚持认为评论的长度并不打算与论文的重要性成正比；事实上，一篇糟糕的论文需要足够详细的评论，以至于没有人需要去看论文本身，而一篇真正重要的论文只需要引起世界的注意即可。

1947年，纽格包尔被任命为布朗大学数学史教授。他对古代数学和天文学史的贡献继续令人震惊。Gray在[4]中写道：-

……他最大的乐趣在于彻底重塑并拓展我们对科学史的知识。事实上，巴比伦人所知比大多数人相信的更多（他还顽皮地坚称，埃及人所知更少）这一信息，在今天仍需要进一步传播。如今该学科所达到的高水平学术，使人们完全有理由期待公认的观点将会改变，而这种高水平在很大程度上归功于他为自己设定的标准、他的组织能力以及他能够吸引到的支持。

在他的经典著作中，我们应当提到The Exact Sciences in Antiquity（1951）和三卷本的History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy（1975）。Pyenson写道[7]：-

纽格包尔属于一种在欧洲比在美国更常见的密集学术出版传统。他的著作在技术上要求很高，假定读者熟悉古代和现代语言以及二手文献。纽格包尔是一位独立思想家，年轻时曾是左翼政治的拥护者，但在其学术工作中不打出任何意识形态旗帜。他竭力避免学术界的显著通病——沉闷。他的作品闪耀着原创洞见和充满活力的文笔。

纽格包尔获得过许多奖项、奖金和荣誉学位。他当选为世界各地主要科学院的成员，包括丹麦皇家科学院、Royal Belgium Academy of Science、Austrian Academy of Sciences、英国科学院、Irish Academy和国家科学院（美国）。美国哲学会授予他富兰克林奖章。他于1986年获得巴尔赞奖。小拉尔夫·P·鲍亚士在[1]中写道，他最大的乐趣在于1979年从美国数学协会获得的奖励，当时他们授予他杰出数学服务奖。文章[2]给出了纽格包尔导致该奖项的主要贡献，尽管他在科学史方面的杰出工作受到赞扬，但获得这一荣誉的主要原因是他在评论期刊方面的贡献。它：-

……是他创办并多年编辑了先是《数学中央公报》……，后来是《数学评论》，从而为数学提供了工作摘要服务这一必不可少的工具。

从20世纪40年代起，尽管仍在布朗大学任教，纽格包尔在普林斯顿的高等爱德华·斯图迪研究院度过了大量时间。1969年从布朗大学退休后，他在普林斯顿度过了更多时间，并于1980年被聘为高等斯图迪研究院的永久成员。

Otto Neugebauer's father, Rudolf Neugebauer, was a railway engineer. His mother's name is unknown. Both parents died when Otto was a young child and he was brought up by an uncle. He became interested in mathematics while at the Gymnasium in Graz but, in 1917, he joined the Austrian army as an artillery lieutenant to avoid having to take his final school examinations. In 1918 the war ended and he became a prisoner of the Italians. He was held in a prison camp in Italy along with another Austrian who went on to achieve world-wide fame, namely Ludwig Wittgenstein.

After he was released from the prison camp, Neugebauer moved around. First he studied electrical engineering and physics at the University of Graz from 1919 to 1921, then he studied mathematics and physics at the University of Munich with Sommerfeld. He settled in Göttingen in 1922 where he began a serious study of mathematics having become friends with Courant, Harald Bohr, and Aleksandrov. His friendship with Bohr developed into a mathematical collaboration and they wrote a joint paper on almost periodic functions. It was to be Neugebauer's first and last paper on mathematics as such for his work at this point took a definite turn.

Neugebauer was an expert in languages and he had studied Egyptian. It was natural, therefore, for Bohr to ask his friend to review a publication on the Rhind papyrus. Once he had begun to study the work, Neugebauer realised that the subject which he wanted to work in was the history of mathematics. He approached Courant and Hilbert to see if he could work for his doctorate on the history of Egyptian unit fractions. They agreed to supervise such a project and Neugebauer received his doctorate for a dissertation on this topic in 1926.

In 1927 Neugebauer was appointed to the staff at Göttingen and he began to lecture on the history of ancient mathematics. One student who attended this first lecture course was Bartel van der Waerden and, as a result, he also developed an interest in ancient mathematics and was to publish works of major importance throughout his life.

However, in 1927 Neugebauer decided that he wanted to research into Babylonian mathematics and, to enable him to do so, he learnt Akkadian which is the language in which the Babylonians wrote their tablets. The Babylonians wrote on tablets of unbaked clay, using cuneiform writing. The symbols were pressed into soft clay tablets with the slanted edge of a stylus and so had a wedge-shaped appearance (and hence the name cuneiform). Many tablets, the earliest dating from around 1700 BC, had survived and Neugebauer knew that they were held by various museums but at that time little work had been undertaken to study them and to evaluate the Babylonian contribution. Gray writes in [4]:-

Neugebauer was to publish his 3-volume collection on mathematical tablets in the mid-1930s. They established the great richness of Babylonian mathematics, far exceeding anything one could have guessed from Greek or Egyptian sources.

Another project which Neugebauer became involved in was the building of a new Mathematical Institute at Göttingen. This was completed in 1929, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, and Courant and Neugebauer jointly directed the Institute until 1932. However, Neugebauer had before this started the first of two projects which would be among the most important contributions anyone has made to mathematics. He persuaded Springer-Verlag to publish a journal reviewing all mathematical publications, which would complement their reviewing journals in other topics. In 1931 the first issue of Zentralblatt für Matematik appeared, edited by Neugebauer.

Zentralblatt für Matematik rapidly became an indispensable tool for all mathematicians. However, the political situation in Germany as the Nazis came to power was to bring about changes which completely changed the course of Neugebauer's career. As Boas writes in [2]:-

He opposed the National Socialists in Germany from the beginning and was forced out of his academic position as a consequence.

Davis [3] recalls Neugebauer saying:-

If you never heard the sound of Nazi boots below you in the street, you cannot understand the history of the period.

I'm sure that Neugebauer is right, yet his very quote may aid us a little in our understanding of the situation. Fortunately Neugebauer had a good friend in Harald Bohr, and he invited Neugebauer to move to the University of Copenhagen in January 1934. Neugebauer took the editorial office of Zentralblatt für Matematik to Copenhagen with him and from 1934 until 1938 Zentralblatt continued to flourish from its headquarters there. The struggle to produce the reviewing journal became more difficult throughout this period, however, for the Nazis tried more and more to influence the editorial policy of the journal. Sadly some fine mathematicians were seduced by the Nazi ideas and mathematicians such as Blaschke attacked the journal.

Matters came to a head in 1938 when [9] Wilhelm Süss insisted that Springer-Verlag should produce Zentralblatt für Matematik in accordance with Nazi principles. Levi-Civita, who was on the editorial board, was dismissed and Neugebauer, together with almost the whole of the editorial board, resigned. Neugebauer destroyed all the records of the journal except for the cumulative index.

Neugebauer was a highly respected historian of mathematics, and the world of mathematics could not afford to lose the reviewing journal that it had come to depend on in only a few years. Veblen arranged for Brown University to offer Neugebauer a chair and the American Mathematical Society saw the chance to support Neugebauer in founding a new reviewing journal. Neugebauer sailed to the United States and [2]:-

... the index to the Zentralblatt came with Neugebauer, although the U.S. customs almost confiscated it as potentially subversive, and it survives to this day.

In a remarkably short time Neugebauer had Mathematical Reviews up and running. The journal started reviewing articles which appeared from July 1939 and the first issue appeared in January 1940. Neugebauer continued as editor of Mathematical Reviews until 1945 when a full-time executive editor was appointed. Neugebauer policy regarding reviews was an interesting one. He [1]:-

... always insisted that the length of the review was not intended to be directly proportional to the importance of the paper; indeed, a bad paper needed to have a review sufficiently detailed so that nobody needed to look at the paper itself, whereas a really important paper needed only to be called to the world's attention.

In 1947 Neugebauer was appointed Professor of the History of Mathematics at Brown University. His contributions to the history of ancient mathematics and astronomy continued to astound. Gray writes in [4] that:-

... his greatest pleasure was in entirely reshaping and extending our knowledge of the history of science. Indeed, the message that Babylonians knew more (and, he impishly insisted, the Egyptians knew less) than most people believe still needs amplification today. The high levels of scholarship that now prevails in the subject gives every prospect that received opinion will change, and that high level is largely due to the standards he set himself, his organisational skills, and the support he was able to attract.

Among his classic texts we should mention The Exact Sciences in Antiquity (1951) and the three volume History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy (1975). Pyenson writes [7]:-

Neugebauer belongs to a tradition of intensive scholarly publishing more at home in Europe than in America. His writings are technically demanding, assuming the reader is familiar with ancient and modern languages as well as the secondary literature. Neugebauer, an independent thinker who in his youth was a partisan of left-wing politics, flew no ideological flag in his scholarly work. He strove mightily to avoid the signal affliction of scholarship - tedium. His work sparkles with original insight and energetic prose.

Neugebauer received many awards, prizes, and honorary degrees. He was elected to membership of the leading academies around the world including the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences, the Royal Belgium Academy of Science, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the British Academy, the Irish Academy and National Academy of Sciences (United States). The American Philosophical Society awarded him their Franklin Medal. He received the Balzan Prize in 1986. Boas writes in [1] that his greatest pleasure was in the award he received in 1979 from the Mathematical Association of America when they gave him their Award for Distinguished service to Mathematics. The article [2] gives Neugebauer's main contributions which led to the award and, although his distinguished work on the history of science is praised, the main reason for the honour was his contribution to reviewing journals. It:-

... is that he founded, and for many years edited, first the "Zentralblatt für Matematik" ..., and later, "Mathematical Reviews", and so gave mathematics the essential tool of a working abstracting service.

From the 1940s onwards, although still on the faculty at Brown University, Neugebauer spent considerable time at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. After he retired from Brown University in 1969 he spent more time at Princeton where he was made a permanent member of the Institute for Advanced Study in 1980.