- Email: [email protected]
Christoph J. Scriba (6 October 1929–26 July 2013)
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
ScienceDirect Historia Mathematica 41 (2014) 6–12 www.elsevier.com/locate/yhmat
In Memoriam
Christoph J. Scriba (6 October 1929–26 July 2013)
Academic tools are seldom seen by others, but can be most revealing. During a stay of over two years in Oxford in the early 1960s, working towards his habilitation thesis, Christoph Scriba prepared a personal card catalogue of all the letters of John Wallis (1616–1703) he had unearthed in, amongst other places, the Bodleian and various college libraries, in the Royal Society and the British Museum. On each card he noted details of date, manuscript and printed sources, and any other relevant bibliographic information. This was not all. He also produced two further catalogues: one of all manuscripts containing Wallis’s papers and letters, listing systematically the content of each of the folio sheets, and one of all the books formerly in the Library of the Savilian professors, now part of the Bodleian, giving precise details of when he had ordered each of the books and when they had been returned to the stacks, after inspection for underlining, marginalia, and so on. Nor did he buy neat new cards specifically for this purpose, as they would have been available from Oxford stationers at the time. Instead, he re-cycled the insides of envelopes used for sending him letters, some white, some brown, some grey, cutting them down to a uniform size. And these cards, carefully inscribed, were not housed in a varnished wooden box such as could then be found in libraries or offices up and down the country, but rather in re-used cartons, one for coffee filters here, one for a presentation table lighter there. The appearance does not diminish the content or the value in any way. These painstakingly produced catalogues and records of scholarly practice were not only accurate and 0315-0860/2014 Published by Elsevier Inc. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.hm.2014.01.004
In Memoriam
7
reliable, but also contained a wealth of information which has only very rarely been superseded. Historical research instruments born of the shortages of post-war Europe and prepared by a careful mind averse to wastefulness, they are still in use today. Christoph Joachim Scriba was born in Darmstadt in the German state of Hesse on 6 October 1929. The son of a Lutheran minister, Hans Scriba, and his wife Walberta (née Becker), he was the eldest of ten children. Times were difficult and family life was soon overshadowed by political turmoil and the ideological conformity which the Protestant church hierarchy imposed after Hitler came to power. Refusing to conform, Hans Scriba was effectively banned, transferred with his family to a provincial parish in the Odenwald region, where Christoph began junior school. Life was hard there, but largely free from the dangers presented by allied bombers. This relative security disappeared in March 1944, when Hans Scriba was transferred with his family to the city of Giessen; almost immediately afterwards, Christoph entered grammar school. In December 1944, he was taken with others to the safety of the surrounding hills, and watched in horror as Giessen was engulfed in flames following the allied bombardment which destroyed most of the old centre of the city, including the family home and possessions. It was an experience which made a lasting impression on him and which he would later recount to those he knew well. In the following March Giessen was occupied by advancing American forces. His schooling having been temporarily interrupted by the end of the Second World War, Christoph Scriba matriculated at the University of Marburg and began studying natural sciences in winter semester 1949/50. There had been no choice in the matter, for the local university, the ancient Ludoviciana, had been in a state of decline since the end of the First World War, and had appeared to be on the point of closure in 1945. The institution that after a time succeeded it, the Justus Liebig Hochschule, at first offered only a very limited set of courses, but by 1951 things had improved sufficiently for Scriba to transfer there and work towards qualifying as a teacher. By February 1955 he had completed the teaching examination for physics, mathematics, and philosophy, and to any outsider would have seen set on entering that profession. Scriba’s story of how he came to work on the history of mathematics is so remarkable that it is worth recounting. A central role in the story is played by Egon Ullrich, one of his professors at Giessen. Although Ullrich was already giving lectures on the history of mathematics at the time Scriba was a student there, those lectures were not part of the curriculum for the teaching examination. Scriba’s interest was awakened because Ullrich often cited historical examples in the regular mathematics lectures he was required to attend. Nonetheless, this would not have been sufficient, had good fortune not also played a part. When Scriba and a fellow student arrived for the mathematical part of their teaching examination, they discovered to their shock that their professor was unprepared for them. Ullrich had no option but to devise suitable questions quickly. Having recognized Scriba’s interest, he asked him to write on a historical topic. Impressed by the quality of the examination script Scriba handed in, and knowing the quality of his work, Ullrich invited him to work on a doctoral thesis. Just a few weeks later, Scriba accompanied Ullrich to a colloquium on the history of mathematics at Oberwolfach in the Black Forest. This was the second such meeting organized by Joseph Ehrenfried Hofmann, the first having taken place the previous year, in 1954. Hofmann, who was a good friend of Ullrich and who had been invited a number of times to give talks in Giessen, suggested to him in discussion that the budding young scholar he had brought along with him should make a detailed study of the mathematical work of James Gregory the topic of his investigations. This was indeed what happened and Scriba soon set to work. Unfortunately, Ullrich died before his doctoral student was able to defend his thesis on James Gregorys frühe Schriften zur Infinitesimalrechnung in June 1957. Appropriately, his place in the examining committee was taken by Hofmann. Less than a month after Scriba had received his doctorate he married Inge Eckel. There was, however, no thought of the young couple settling down. Soon they were packing their bags and moving to the United States, where Scriba took up a post as instructor in mathematics at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. Leaving behind the ever-present shortages, the ruined cities and lives of post-war Germany for the plentiful
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In Memoriam
provisions of life in the American mid-west was a contrast which is scarcely imaginable today, and to which Scriba often referred in conversation. Nor was it only better living standards which appealed. There were other, less-tangible aspects of academic life the other side of the Atlantic which made a deep impression on Scriba and which in crucial ways informed his academic practice when he returned later to Germany. After a year in Kentucky, whose policy of racial segregation he found anything but appealing, Scriba moved to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he was appointed assistant professor in mathematics. Again staying for only one academic year, he moved to the University of Toronto in 1959, where he became lecturer and subsequently assistant professor in mathematics. As his carefully recorded list of courses and lectures reveals, he was all this time continuing to pursue his historical interests alongside carrying out the regular core duties of a mathematics professor. Christoph Scriba might have continued his career in Canada, but after the birth of his son, Friedemann, and with brighter prospects in Europe, he and his wife packed their bags again, in 1962. With the support of J.E. Hofmann, Scriba had succeeded in obtaining a grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG) to conduct research on the mathematical papers of John Wallis with the aim of writing a habilitation thesis, and obtaining the venia legendi. For the next two years the family lived in Oxford. Scriba immersed himself in the intellectual life of the University, occasionally attending seminars, studying for hours in the Bodleian, and developing what became life-long friendships with Adolf Prag as well as A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas Hall, who lived close by at Tackley. From this point onwards Scriba’s name was to become intimately associated with that of the Savilian professor of geometry, his Studien zur Mathematik des John Wallis (1616–1703), which came out in1966, being the first and for many years only monograph devoted to Wallis. In the meantime, through the publication of excellent articles on Leibniz, Wallis, Newton, and Mercator, he was already beginning to make a name for himself in the English-speaking world. After his sojourn in Oxford, Scriba moved to the University of Hamburg where, in 1965, he was appointed lecturer (wissenschaftlicher Assistent) at the Institute for History of Science headed by Bernhard Sticker. The following year, after successfully completing his habilitation in February 1966, he was promoted to the rank of Oberassistent and became primarily responsible for the teaching of history of mathematics. This was a major focus at the Institute, which was uniquely situated within the University of Hamburg’s department of mathematics. Soon Scriba was promoted yet again, this time to the rank of Universitätsdozent, and he served in this capacity until 1969, when he was appointed to the newly-created chair for history of exact sciences and technology at the Technische Universität (TU) Berlin. In the six years Scriba spent in Berlin he built up from scratch an outstanding library for what became the equally outstanding Institut für Philosophie, Wissenschaftstheorie, Wissenschafts- und Technikgeschichte. Indeed, he succeeded in giving the history of science programme at the TU a high reputation well beyond the borders of that then divided city. Friends and colleagues affectionately christened the department with the extraordinarily long name the ‘Scriba Institute’, a reflection of his benign leadership and also of the afternoon tea-breaks in his office when members of staff regularly got together. The author has fond memories of the same institution later in Scriba’s office in Hamburg. The 1970s were restless years politically in Berlin and university life was often disrupted through student strikes and demonstrations. It was therefore not without a certain sense of relief that Scriba and his family were able to return to Hamburg in 1975, when he became successor to Sticker as head of the Institute for History of Science. Although he was offered the position of professor of the history of mathematics at Toronto, following Kenneth May’s death at the end of 1977, ultimately he declined. Christoph Scriba remained in post as full professor (professor ordinarius) in Hamburg until his retirement twenty years later in 1995. While the focus of Scriba’s research was on the history of seventeenth-century mathematics, he also made valuable and lasting contributions to the study of C.F. Gauss and on number theory. His second book was The Concept of Number. A chapter in the history of mathematics, which he published in 1968.
In Memoriam
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Methodological questions relating to the historiography of mathematics were also a central concern, and in a number of publications he reflects on the significance of internal history, which J.E. Hofmann had promoted, in the light of the increasing popularity of the history of mathematical ideas or of the social history of mathematics. One thinks here particularly of his essay ‘Geschichte der Mathematik im Spiegel der Zeit’, presented at a meeting in Giessen in honour of Hofmann, and published in 1971, in which he sets out the ways in which work on the history of mathematics was developing. While recognizing the value of social history and the history of ideas he remained largely wedded to the approach he had inherited from his academic mentors. But he recognized the difficulties with that approach, too. On one occasion, confessing that his core concern was for the internal development of mathematical questions, theories, and methods, Scriba noted that he was often presented with the problem of making his work comprehensible to the non-mathematician, adding the remark tinged with resignation that ‘most mathematicians, who could understand it, are not interested at all’. Accessibility was undoubtedly less of an issue with Scriba’s wider studies on the history of science and technology or with his work on the relation between mathematics, technology, and music. There was a practical side to these studies, too, for Scriba was an accomplished player of the instruments of the recorder family, as participants of the Oberwolfach meetings warmly recall. In addition, he produced a whole swathe of publications on the role of history in mathematics education, reflecting in many ways the very beginning of his own historical endeavours in post-war Giessen. Scriba was convinced that mathematics was fundamentally connected with human culture. Nowhere was this connection in his view better expressed than in the relationship between mathematics and recreational games. Correspondingly, a whole series of his articles was also devoted to this topic. Christoph Scriba always felt a strong sense of duty to the historical legacy of his academic mentors, and particularly J.E. Hofmann, with whom he worked closely after their first meeting at the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut. Jokingly he described himself as Hofmann’s menial (Hilfsknecht), who willingly took on the task of searching out rare books, eliciting dates, and verifying historical facts, and then sending the results to Hofmann’s house in Ichenhausen in Bavaria. Later came a steady stream of printer’s copy with accompanying letters, particularly, one suspects, in connection with Hofmann’s edition of the first volume of the Academy Edition of Leibniz’s mathematical and natural-scientific correspondence, where Scriba’s contribution is also noted. After Hofmann’s death in 1973, he ensured that his still unfinished combined Register to Leibniz’s Mathematische Schriften and Briefwechsel mit Mathematikern was completed and brought to publication. Ever since its appearance, the Register has been a vital resource for scholars using the Gerhardt editions of Leibniz’s mathematical papers. More was to follow. Recognizing that much of Hofmann’s prodigious output of journal articles and essays was no longer accessible, Scriba made a careful selection of over fifty of his contributions on the history of mathematics in a magnificent two-volume collection published in 1990. The collection also contained for the first time a complete list of Hofmann’s publications which Scriba put together with care and dedication. Significantly, Scriba notes in the preface that for the first time justice had been done to the Hofmann’s two core areas of activity, as a scholar and as a teacher. He might equally have been writing about himself. The colloquia in Oberwolfach were of course also part of the same heritage. Since the 1960s Scriba had been Hofmann’s co-organizer, and following his death he ensured that the institution continued to flourish. One of the changes which Scriba introduced was to organize the yearly meetings with different partners. The format changed as well. Not only was the original restriction to internal history lifted and replaced by a much broader understanding of what constituted the history of mathematics, but he also responded to increasing demand in participation by introducing thematic focal points. Another change was even more crucial. Hofmann’s original meetings had been essentially with German participants. Under Scriba’s direction this ceased to be the case. He once told the author that he considered one of his successful achievements to have been the transformation of the Oberwolfach colloquia into meetings with a strong international participation.
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In Memoriam
Scriba’s successful efforts to promote the development of the history of mathematics and the collaboration of those working not only in this field but also more broadly in the history of science, found both national and international recognition early in his career. In 1967 he was elected corresponding member of the Académie internationale d’histoire des sciences, becoming full member four years later. From 1981 to 1995 he held the office of Vice-president of Académie. Membership of the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina, now the German National Academy, also came rapidly, in 1972. From early on there were services to the academic community, too. For a decade Scriba served as head of the section for history of science and medicine of the Leopoldina, and he was a member of the Senate from 1982 to 1992. He was also editor of the history of science journal Acta historica Leopoldina from 1990 to 1998. But these facts, impressive on their own, conceal an important detail. In the years preceding German reunification, the Leopoldina, situated through geo-political accident in the eastern part of the country, was one of only a very few institutions which allowed for the regular meeting and exchange of ideas of scholars from both sides of the inner German border. Christoph Scriba’s efforts in promoting such collaboration in the history of science both through the Leopoldina and through the colloquia in Oberwolfach were tremendous, but by him characteristically understated. There were of course many other honours. In 1965 Scriba was made a member of the mathematical and scientific section of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen. From 1976 onwards he was a member of the Joachim Jungius Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften in Hamburg. He was elected to the HausdorffKommission of the then Rheinisch-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften in Düsseldorf in 1991. In the same year he was elected foreign member of the Royal Belgian Academy of Sciences, Letters, and Fine Arts. Two years later, in 1993, he received special recognition from his colleagues in the history of mathematics when he was awarded the Kenneth O. May Medal at the XIXth International Congress of the History of Science in Zaragoza. Among many high-ranking offices held, Scriba was chairman of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für die Geschichte der Medizin, Naturwissenschaft und Technik from 1976 to 1979. Between 1977 and 1985 he served as President, and then for a term as Vice-president, of the National Committee of the Federal Republic of Germany in the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science (IUHPS). In 1977 he was appointed chairman of the International Commission on the History of Mathematics, a joint commission of the International Mathematical Union and the IUHPS, and remained in office until 1985. In 1989 he chaired the organizing committee and the administrative group responsible for the XVIIIth International Congress of the History of Science, which was held in Hamburg and Munich, 1–9 August. At the University of Hamburg he was vice administrative director of the Graduate College devoted to Greek and Byzantine text tradition, history of science, and humanistic research and neo-Latin, which successfully launched the careers of many young academics now teaching at universities around the world. Christoph Scriba’s congeniality as a scholar coupled with the profound sense of responsibility which he brought to all the tasks he took on, made him a much sought-after member of advisory boards and executive committees. In such capacities he served the Deutsches Museum in Munich from 1976 to 1992, the Wilhelm Blaschke Foundation and the Hans Schimank Memorial Foundation, both in Hamburg, from 1980 and 1982 respectively. For seven years he was subject referee for history of science for the DFG. And for many years he also sat on the advisory council of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Society in Hanover. Scriba was a member of the editorial board of Historia Mathematica, and contributed in a decisive way to the life of the journal up to his death. Likewise, he was a member of the editorial boards of large number of academic journals, including Archive for History of Exact Sciences (1973–1987), Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Sciences (from 1974), Humanismus und Technik (1969–1979), Isis (1971–1975), Studia Leibnitiana (from 1984), Sudhoffs Archiv (1969–1979), Gan¸ita Bh¯arat¯ı (from 1983), and Acta historica Leopoldina (from 1990). He was also advisor to various history of science publication series, including Arbor Scientiarum (1971–1986).
In Memoriam
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With retirement approaching in 1995, Scriba returned to his long-held plan of producing an edition of the correspondence of John Wallis. A considerable amount of the groundwork for this project had been completed in the 1960s when he painstakingly combed manuscript collections in Oxford, London, and elsewhere, and produced exhaustive catalogues documenting the scientific papers of Wallis that were then known. One of the fruits of these researches was the ‘Tentative Index of the Correspondence of John Wallis’, published in 1967, which effectively provided the starting point for his later work on the letters. Three years later, his carefully prepared edition of the ‘Autobiography of John Wallis’ appeared in print and has remained to this day a valuable resource for scholars researching the history of the early Royal Society. In 1972, Scriba successfully brought out a reprinted edition of Wallis’s three-volume Opera Mathematica, by which means the works of the Savilian professor were made more easily accessible to the wider scholarly community. With financial support from the DFG, work on the edition of the Correspondence of John Wallis (1616–1703) in collaboration first with Siegmund Probst and then with the author soon got underway in Hamburg. Soon also previously unknown Wallis letters, especially in Oxford’s University Archives were discovered and Scriba’s original plan for a two-volume collection of Wallis’s hitherto unpublished scientific correspondence was superseded by the aim of producing a complete edition. At the time of his death, Scriba was working on the index of the fourth volume, marking the half-way point of the re-configured project. Characteristically, the Correspondence of John Wallis was only one of numerous tasks and activities to which Christoph Scriba devoted his working time in retirement. Just as in earlier years he had contributed to the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, so now he was commissioned to write articles for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. There were other, substantially larger projects, too. In collaboration with Peter Schreiber, Scriba published a comprehensive survey of the history of mathematics since ancient times entitled 5000 Jahre Geometrie: Geschichte, Kulturen, Menschen, first published in 2001 and now in its third edition. He was also one of the core contributors to a project of the International Commission on History of Mathematics aimed at producing an historical account of the development of the history of mathematics as a discipline from its origins to the present day. Much of the work in marshaling, editing, and correcting the variously authored chapters took place under Scriba’s supervision in Hamburg. The resulting volume, which he co-edited with Joseph W. Dauben under the title Writing the History of Mathematics: Its Historical Development, appeared in 2002. Fittingly, the volume is dedicated to the memory of Kenneth May, through whose efforts in large part Historia Mathematica was founded, and to the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut in Oberwolfach, where the coordinating group had met regularly during the previous ten years. The listing of awards, accolades, and achievements reflect the exemplary character of Christoph Scriba both as a scholar of the highest rank and as a scientific organizer who helped shape the course of the history of science in post-war Germany. Admiration and affection came in less tangible form from his students, colleagues, and friends but such sentiments always accompanied him. He was a dedicated teacher even beyond the walls of the University of Hamburg. Over the years he regularly organized residential seminars with a variety of colleagues, including Jeanne Peiffer, Andreas Kleinert, and Menso Folkerts, at a number of institutions including the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel on topics as diverse as cartography and classical theories of architecture, but often focusing on the subject closest to his heart, the history of early modern mathematics. These seminars were aimed at undergraduates and early career historians and gave them unique and valuable experience in investigating and using historical resources as well as the opportunity to present their own work. Nor was this dedication without reward. The list of graduate students in Hamburg and of the scholars with whose habilitation examinations he was involved reads like a Who’s Who of Germany’s science historians. Although modestly he rejected any suggestion that he had contributed decisively to the growth of the history of science as a discipline, he was willing to see himself as building on the tradition of forerunners such as Hans Schimank and Bernard Sticker in Hamburg, Kurt Vogel and Friedrich Klemm in Munich, and of course the ever-present J.E. Hofmann.
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In Memoriam
When recalling the consequences of his earliest meetings with ‘the master of all things Leibnizian’, Christoph Scriba pointed out that most of the letters which Hofmann sent him in rapid succession were written in shorthand and that they ‘were often supplemented by coloured diagrams’. How fortunate that Scriba had taken courses in shorthand and typewriting while still at school! These skills would stand him in good stead, for when Hofmann made the far-reaching proposal, back in 1955, that he work on Gregory, Scriba had no means at all of financing such an endeavour. It was only because Ullrich was able to offer him a part-time position as secretary to the mathematics department in Giessen, was he able to accept the proposal. Nor did those useful secretarial abilities ever desert him. Many of the catalogue cards bearing details of Wallis letters and manuscripts which he prepared so diligently while he was in Oxford in the early 1960s contain notes in shorthand – and there are many such jottings, too, in his final notes. One searches in vain for slovenliness in Christoph Scriba’s academic papers or in the archival and bibliographical instruments he produced. He always brought the highest standards to the work he carried out, whether it be in the extensive array of publications he produced over the course of his career or in the commissions and advisory boards on which he sat. As he wrote on one occasion to the author: ‘I was taught by my parents that when one accepts a task, one has to perform it with thoroughness and full responsibility’. And he also pointed out that he could never have achieved what he had done without the constant support of his wife, Inge. A further reflection of Scriba’s deep moral grounding was his aversion to display of academic status or exhibition of material wealth. He wore his profound knowledge lightly, indeed far too modestly. When he returned to Germany from North America in the 1960s, he brought with him a culture of open doors and absence of hierarchy which even today is largely foreign in German universities. Students warmed to the atmosphere created, scholars from home and abroad regularly paid visits, learning flourished. Newcomers were greeted with friendliness and his infectious good humour. Who could fail to be inspired by his qualities? For those who were privileged enough to work closely with this gentle master of the historical art and conscientious teacher his passing has left a profound sense of loss. Philip Beeley Faculty of History, University of Oxford, Old Boys’ High School, George Street, Oxford OX1 2RL, UK E-mail address: [email protected] Available online 30 January 2014
ScienceDirect Historia Mathematica 41 (2014) 6–12 www.elsevier.com/locate/yhmat
In Memoriam
Christoph J. Scriba (6 October 1929–26 July 2013)
Academic tools are seldom seen by others, but can be most revealing. During a stay of over two years in Oxford in the early 1960s, working towards his habilitation thesis, Christoph Scriba prepared a personal card catalogue of all the letters of John Wallis (1616–1703) he had unearthed in, amongst other places, the Bodleian and various college libraries, in the Royal Society and the British Museum. On each card he noted details of date, manuscript and printed sources, and any other relevant bibliographic information. This was not all. He also produced two further catalogues: one of all manuscripts containing Wallis’s papers and letters, listing systematically the content of each of the folio sheets, and one of all the books formerly in the Library of the Savilian professors, now part of the Bodleian, giving precise details of when he had ordered each of the books and when they had been returned to the stacks, after inspection for underlining, marginalia, and so on. Nor did he buy neat new cards specifically for this purpose, as they would have been available from Oxford stationers at the time. Instead, he re-cycled the insides of envelopes used for sending him letters, some white, some brown, some grey, cutting them down to a uniform size. And these cards, carefully inscribed, were not housed in a varnished wooden box such as could then be found in libraries or offices up and down the country, but rather in re-used cartons, one for coffee filters here, one for a presentation table lighter there. The appearance does not diminish the content or the value in any way. These painstakingly produced catalogues and records of scholarly practice were not only accurate and 0315-0860/2014 Published by Elsevier Inc. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.hm.2014.01.004
In Memoriam
7
reliable, but also contained a wealth of information which has only very rarely been superseded. Historical research instruments born of the shortages of post-war Europe and prepared by a careful mind averse to wastefulness, they are still in use today. Christoph Joachim Scriba was born in Darmstadt in the German state of Hesse on 6 October 1929. The son of a Lutheran minister, Hans Scriba, and his wife Walberta (née Becker), he was the eldest of ten children. Times were difficult and family life was soon overshadowed by political turmoil and the ideological conformity which the Protestant church hierarchy imposed after Hitler came to power. Refusing to conform, Hans Scriba was effectively banned, transferred with his family to a provincial parish in the Odenwald region, where Christoph began junior school. Life was hard there, but largely free from the dangers presented by allied bombers. This relative security disappeared in March 1944, when Hans Scriba was transferred with his family to the city of Giessen; almost immediately afterwards, Christoph entered grammar school. In December 1944, he was taken with others to the safety of the surrounding hills, and watched in horror as Giessen was engulfed in flames following the allied bombardment which destroyed most of the old centre of the city, including the family home and possessions. It was an experience which made a lasting impression on him and which he would later recount to those he knew well. In the following March Giessen was occupied by advancing American forces. His schooling having been temporarily interrupted by the end of the Second World War, Christoph Scriba matriculated at the University of Marburg and began studying natural sciences in winter semester 1949/50. There had been no choice in the matter, for the local university, the ancient Ludoviciana, had been in a state of decline since the end of the First World War, and had appeared to be on the point of closure in 1945. The institution that after a time succeeded it, the Justus Liebig Hochschule, at first offered only a very limited set of courses, but by 1951 things had improved sufficiently for Scriba to transfer there and work towards qualifying as a teacher. By February 1955 he had completed the teaching examination for physics, mathematics, and philosophy, and to any outsider would have seen set on entering that profession. Scriba’s story of how he came to work on the history of mathematics is so remarkable that it is worth recounting. A central role in the story is played by Egon Ullrich, one of his professors at Giessen. Although Ullrich was already giving lectures on the history of mathematics at the time Scriba was a student there, those lectures were not part of the curriculum for the teaching examination. Scriba’s interest was awakened because Ullrich often cited historical examples in the regular mathematics lectures he was required to attend. Nonetheless, this would not have been sufficient, had good fortune not also played a part. When Scriba and a fellow student arrived for the mathematical part of their teaching examination, they discovered to their shock that their professor was unprepared for them. Ullrich had no option but to devise suitable questions quickly. Having recognized Scriba’s interest, he asked him to write on a historical topic. Impressed by the quality of the examination script Scriba handed in, and knowing the quality of his work, Ullrich invited him to work on a doctoral thesis. Just a few weeks later, Scriba accompanied Ullrich to a colloquium on the history of mathematics at Oberwolfach in the Black Forest. This was the second such meeting organized by Joseph Ehrenfried Hofmann, the first having taken place the previous year, in 1954. Hofmann, who was a good friend of Ullrich and who had been invited a number of times to give talks in Giessen, suggested to him in discussion that the budding young scholar he had brought along with him should make a detailed study of the mathematical work of James Gregory the topic of his investigations. This was indeed what happened and Scriba soon set to work. Unfortunately, Ullrich died before his doctoral student was able to defend his thesis on James Gregorys frühe Schriften zur Infinitesimalrechnung in June 1957. Appropriately, his place in the examining committee was taken by Hofmann. Less than a month after Scriba had received his doctorate he married Inge Eckel. There was, however, no thought of the young couple settling down. Soon they were packing their bags and moving to the United States, where Scriba took up a post as instructor in mathematics at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. Leaving behind the ever-present shortages, the ruined cities and lives of post-war Germany for the plentiful
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In Memoriam
provisions of life in the American mid-west was a contrast which is scarcely imaginable today, and to which Scriba often referred in conversation. Nor was it only better living standards which appealed. There were other, less-tangible aspects of academic life the other side of the Atlantic which made a deep impression on Scriba and which in crucial ways informed his academic practice when he returned later to Germany. After a year in Kentucky, whose policy of racial segregation he found anything but appealing, Scriba moved to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he was appointed assistant professor in mathematics. Again staying for only one academic year, he moved to the University of Toronto in 1959, where he became lecturer and subsequently assistant professor in mathematics. As his carefully recorded list of courses and lectures reveals, he was all this time continuing to pursue his historical interests alongside carrying out the regular core duties of a mathematics professor. Christoph Scriba might have continued his career in Canada, but after the birth of his son, Friedemann, and with brighter prospects in Europe, he and his wife packed their bags again, in 1962. With the support of J.E. Hofmann, Scriba had succeeded in obtaining a grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG) to conduct research on the mathematical papers of John Wallis with the aim of writing a habilitation thesis, and obtaining the venia legendi. For the next two years the family lived in Oxford. Scriba immersed himself in the intellectual life of the University, occasionally attending seminars, studying for hours in the Bodleian, and developing what became life-long friendships with Adolf Prag as well as A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas Hall, who lived close by at Tackley. From this point onwards Scriba’s name was to become intimately associated with that of the Savilian professor of geometry, his Studien zur Mathematik des John Wallis (1616–1703), which came out in1966, being the first and for many years only monograph devoted to Wallis. In the meantime, through the publication of excellent articles on Leibniz, Wallis, Newton, and Mercator, he was already beginning to make a name for himself in the English-speaking world. After his sojourn in Oxford, Scriba moved to the University of Hamburg where, in 1965, he was appointed lecturer (wissenschaftlicher Assistent) at the Institute for History of Science headed by Bernhard Sticker. The following year, after successfully completing his habilitation in February 1966, he was promoted to the rank of Oberassistent and became primarily responsible for the teaching of history of mathematics. This was a major focus at the Institute, which was uniquely situated within the University of Hamburg’s department of mathematics. Soon Scriba was promoted yet again, this time to the rank of Universitätsdozent, and he served in this capacity until 1969, when he was appointed to the newly-created chair for history of exact sciences and technology at the Technische Universität (TU) Berlin. In the six years Scriba spent in Berlin he built up from scratch an outstanding library for what became the equally outstanding Institut für Philosophie, Wissenschaftstheorie, Wissenschafts- und Technikgeschichte. Indeed, he succeeded in giving the history of science programme at the TU a high reputation well beyond the borders of that then divided city. Friends and colleagues affectionately christened the department with the extraordinarily long name the ‘Scriba Institute’, a reflection of his benign leadership and also of the afternoon tea-breaks in his office when members of staff regularly got together. The author has fond memories of the same institution later in Scriba’s office in Hamburg. The 1970s were restless years politically in Berlin and university life was often disrupted through student strikes and demonstrations. It was therefore not without a certain sense of relief that Scriba and his family were able to return to Hamburg in 1975, when he became successor to Sticker as head of the Institute for History of Science. Although he was offered the position of professor of the history of mathematics at Toronto, following Kenneth May’s death at the end of 1977, ultimately he declined. Christoph Scriba remained in post as full professor (professor ordinarius) in Hamburg until his retirement twenty years later in 1995. While the focus of Scriba’s research was on the history of seventeenth-century mathematics, he also made valuable and lasting contributions to the study of C.F. Gauss and on number theory. His second book was The Concept of Number. A chapter in the history of mathematics, which he published in 1968.
In Memoriam
9
Methodological questions relating to the historiography of mathematics were also a central concern, and in a number of publications he reflects on the significance of internal history, which J.E. Hofmann had promoted, in the light of the increasing popularity of the history of mathematical ideas or of the social history of mathematics. One thinks here particularly of his essay ‘Geschichte der Mathematik im Spiegel der Zeit’, presented at a meeting in Giessen in honour of Hofmann, and published in 1971, in which he sets out the ways in which work on the history of mathematics was developing. While recognizing the value of social history and the history of ideas he remained largely wedded to the approach he had inherited from his academic mentors. But he recognized the difficulties with that approach, too. On one occasion, confessing that his core concern was for the internal development of mathematical questions, theories, and methods, Scriba noted that he was often presented with the problem of making his work comprehensible to the non-mathematician, adding the remark tinged with resignation that ‘most mathematicians, who could understand it, are not interested at all’. Accessibility was undoubtedly less of an issue with Scriba’s wider studies on the history of science and technology or with his work on the relation between mathematics, technology, and music. There was a practical side to these studies, too, for Scriba was an accomplished player of the instruments of the recorder family, as participants of the Oberwolfach meetings warmly recall. In addition, he produced a whole swathe of publications on the role of history in mathematics education, reflecting in many ways the very beginning of his own historical endeavours in post-war Giessen. Scriba was convinced that mathematics was fundamentally connected with human culture. Nowhere was this connection in his view better expressed than in the relationship between mathematics and recreational games. Correspondingly, a whole series of his articles was also devoted to this topic. Christoph Scriba always felt a strong sense of duty to the historical legacy of his academic mentors, and particularly J.E. Hofmann, with whom he worked closely after their first meeting at the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut. Jokingly he described himself as Hofmann’s menial (Hilfsknecht), who willingly took on the task of searching out rare books, eliciting dates, and verifying historical facts, and then sending the results to Hofmann’s house in Ichenhausen in Bavaria. Later came a steady stream of printer’s copy with accompanying letters, particularly, one suspects, in connection with Hofmann’s edition of the first volume of the Academy Edition of Leibniz’s mathematical and natural-scientific correspondence, where Scriba’s contribution is also noted. After Hofmann’s death in 1973, he ensured that his still unfinished combined Register to Leibniz’s Mathematische Schriften and Briefwechsel mit Mathematikern was completed and brought to publication. Ever since its appearance, the Register has been a vital resource for scholars using the Gerhardt editions of Leibniz’s mathematical papers. More was to follow. Recognizing that much of Hofmann’s prodigious output of journal articles and essays was no longer accessible, Scriba made a careful selection of over fifty of his contributions on the history of mathematics in a magnificent two-volume collection published in 1990. The collection also contained for the first time a complete list of Hofmann’s publications which Scriba put together with care and dedication. Significantly, Scriba notes in the preface that for the first time justice had been done to the Hofmann’s two core areas of activity, as a scholar and as a teacher. He might equally have been writing about himself. The colloquia in Oberwolfach were of course also part of the same heritage. Since the 1960s Scriba had been Hofmann’s co-organizer, and following his death he ensured that the institution continued to flourish. One of the changes which Scriba introduced was to organize the yearly meetings with different partners. The format changed as well. Not only was the original restriction to internal history lifted and replaced by a much broader understanding of what constituted the history of mathematics, but he also responded to increasing demand in participation by introducing thematic focal points. Another change was even more crucial. Hofmann’s original meetings had been essentially with German participants. Under Scriba’s direction this ceased to be the case. He once told the author that he considered one of his successful achievements to have been the transformation of the Oberwolfach colloquia into meetings with a strong international participation.
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In Memoriam
Scriba’s successful efforts to promote the development of the history of mathematics and the collaboration of those working not only in this field but also more broadly in the history of science, found both national and international recognition early in his career. In 1967 he was elected corresponding member of the Académie internationale d’histoire des sciences, becoming full member four years later. From 1981 to 1995 he held the office of Vice-president of Académie. Membership of the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina, now the German National Academy, also came rapidly, in 1972. From early on there were services to the academic community, too. For a decade Scriba served as head of the section for history of science and medicine of the Leopoldina, and he was a member of the Senate from 1982 to 1992. He was also editor of the history of science journal Acta historica Leopoldina from 1990 to 1998. But these facts, impressive on their own, conceal an important detail. In the years preceding German reunification, the Leopoldina, situated through geo-political accident in the eastern part of the country, was one of only a very few institutions which allowed for the regular meeting and exchange of ideas of scholars from both sides of the inner German border. Christoph Scriba’s efforts in promoting such collaboration in the history of science both through the Leopoldina and through the colloquia in Oberwolfach were tremendous, but by him characteristically understated. There were of course many other honours. In 1965 Scriba was made a member of the mathematical and scientific section of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen. From 1976 onwards he was a member of the Joachim Jungius Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften in Hamburg. He was elected to the HausdorffKommission of the then Rheinisch-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften in Düsseldorf in 1991. In the same year he was elected foreign member of the Royal Belgian Academy of Sciences, Letters, and Fine Arts. Two years later, in 1993, he received special recognition from his colleagues in the history of mathematics when he was awarded the Kenneth O. May Medal at the XIXth International Congress of the History of Science in Zaragoza. Among many high-ranking offices held, Scriba was chairman of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für die Geschichte der Medizin, Naturwissenschaft und Technik from 1976 to 1979. Between 1977 and 1985 he served as President, and then for a term as Vice-president, of the National Committee of the Federal Republic of Germany in the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science (IUHPS). In 1977 he was appointed chairman of the International Commission on the History of Mathematics, a joint commission of the International Mathematical Union and the IUHPS, and remained in office until 1985. In 1989 he chaired the organizing committee and the administrative group responsible for the XVIIIth International Congress of the History of Science, which was held in Hamburg and Munich, 1–9 August. At the University of Hamburg he was vice administrative director of the Graduate College devoted to Greek and Byzantine text tradition, history of science, and humanistic research and neo-Latin, which successfully launched the careers of many young academics now teaching at universities around the world. Christoph Scriba’s congeniality as a scholar coupled with the profound sense of responsibility which he brought to all the tasks he took on, made him a much sought-after member of advisory boards and executive committees. In such capacities he served the Deutsches Museum in Munich from 1976 to 1992, the Wilhelm Blaschke Foundation and the Hans Schimank Memorial Foundation, both in Hamburg, from 1980 and 1982 respectively. For seven years he was subject referee for history of science for the DFG. And for many years he also sat on the advisory council of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Society in Hanover. Scriba was a member of the editorial board of Historia Mathematica, and contributed in a decisive way to the life of the journal up to his death. Likewise, he was a member of the editorial boards of large number of academic journals, including Archive for History of Exact Sciences (1973–1987), Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Sciences (from 1974), Humanismus und Technik (1969–1979), Isis (1971–1975), Studia Leibnitiana (from 1984), Sudhoffs Archiv (1969–1979), Gan¸ita Bh¯arat¯ı (from 1983), and Acta historica Leopoldina (from 1990). He was also advisor to various history of science publication series, including Arbor Scientiarum (1971–1986).
In Memoriam
11
With retirement approaching in 1995, Scriba returned to his long-held plan of producing an edition of the correspondence of John Wallis. A considerable amount of the groundwork for this project had been completed in the 1960s when he painstakingly combed manuscript collections in Oxford, London, and elsewhere, and produced exhaustive catalogues documenting the scientific papers of Wallis that were then known. One of the fruits of these researches was the ‘Tentative Index of the Correspondence of John Wallis’, published in 1967, which effectively provided the starting point for his later work on the letters. Three years later, his carefully prepared edition of the ‘Autobiography of John Wallis’ appeared in print and has remained to this day a valuable resource for scholars researching the history of the early Royal Society. In 1972, Scriba successfully brought out a reprinted edition of Wallis’s three-volume Opera Mathematica, by which means the works of the Savilian professor were made more easily accessible to the wider scholarly community. With financial support from the DFG, work on the edition of the Correspondence of John Wallis (1616–1703) in collaboration first with Siegmund Probst and then with the author soon got underway in Hamburg. Soon also previously unknown Wallis letters, especially in Oxford’s University Archives were discovered and Scriba’s original plan for a two-volume collection of Wallis’s hitherto unpublished scientific correspondence was superseded by the aim of producing a complete edition. At the time of his death, Scriba was working on the index of the fourth volume, marking the half-way point of the re-configured project. Characteristically, the Correspondence of John Wallis was only one of numerous tasks and activities to which Christoph Scriba devoted his working time in retirement. Just as in earlier years he had contributed to the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, so now he was commissioned to write articles for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. There were other, substantially larger projects, too. In collaboration with Peter Schreiber, Scriba published a comprehensive survey of the history of mathematics since ancient times entitled 5000 Jahre Geometrie: Geschichte, Kulturen, Menschen, first published in 2001 and now in its third edition. He was also one of the core contributors to a project of the International Commission on History of Mathematics aimed at producing an historical account of the development of the history of mathematics as a discipline from its origins to the present day. Much of the work in marshaling, editing, and correcting the variously authored chapters took place under Scriba’s supervision in Hamburg. The resulting volume, which he co-edited with Joseph W. Dauben under the title Writing the History of Mathematics: Its Historical Development, appeared in 2002. Fittingly, the volume is dedicated to the memory of Kenneth May, through whose efforts in large part Historia Mathematica was founded, and to the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut in Oberwolfach, where the coordinating group had met regularly during the previous ten years. The listing of awards, accolades, and achievements reflect the exemplary character of Christoph Scriba both as a scholar of the highest rank and as a scientific organizer who helped shape the course of the history of science in post-war Germany. Admiration and affection came in less tangible form from his students, colleagues, and friends but such sentiments always accompanied him. He was a dedicated teacher even beyond the walls of the University of Hamburg. Over the years he regularly organized residential seminars with a variety of colleagues, including Jeanne Peiffer, Andreas Kleinert, and Menso Folkerts, at a number of institutions including the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel on topics as diverse as cartography and classical theories of architecture, but often focusing on the subject closest to his heart, the history of early modern mathematics. These seminars were aimed at undergraduates and early career historians and gave them unique and valuable experience in investigating and using historical resources as well as the opportunity to present their own work. Nor was this dedication without reward. The list of graduate students in Hamburg and of the scholars with whose habilitation examinations he was involved reads like a Who’s Who of Germany’s science historians. Although modestly he rejected any suggestion that he had contributed decisively to the growth of the history of science as a discipline, he was willing to see himself as building on the tradition of forerunners such as Hans Schimank and Bernard Sticker in Hamburg, Kurt Vogel and Friedrich Klemm in Munich, and of course the ever-present J.E. Hofmann.
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In Memoriam
When recalling the consequences of his earliest meetings with ‘the master of all things Leibnizian’, Christoph Scriba pointed out that most of the letters which Hofmann sent him in rapid succession were written in shorthand and that they ‘were often supplemented by coloured diagrams’. How fortunate that Scriba had taken courses in shorthand and typewriting while still at school! These skills would stand him in good stead, for when Hofmann made the far-reaching proposal, back in 1955, that he work on Gregory, Scriba had no means at all of financing such an endeavour. It was only because Ullrich was able to offer him a part-time position as secretary to the mathematics department in Giessen, was he able to accept the proposal. Nor did those useful secretarial abilities ever desert him. Many of the catalogue cards bearing details of Wallis letters and manuscripts which he prepared so diligently while he was in Oxford in the early 1960s contain notes in shorthand – and there are many such jottings, too, in his final notes. One searches in vain for slovenliness in Christoph Scriba’s academic papers or in the archival and bibliographical instruments he produced. He always brought the highest standards to the work he carried out, whether it be in the extensive array of publications he produced over the course of his career or in the commissions and advisory boards on which he sat. As he wrote on one occasion to the author: ‘I was taught by my parents that when one accepts a task, one has to perform it with thoroughness and full responsibility’. And he also pointed out that he could never have achieved what he had done without the constant support of his wife, Inge. A further reflection of Scriba’s deep moral grounding was his aversion to display of academic status or exhibition of material wealth. He wore his profound knowledge lightly, indeed far too modestly. When he returned to Germany from North America in the 1960s, he brought with him a culture of open doors and absence of hierarchy which even today is largely foreign in German universities. Students warmed to the atmosphere created, scholars from home and abroad regularly paid visits, learning flourished. Newcomers were greeted with friendliness and his infectious good humour. Who could fail to be inspired by his qualities? For those who were privileged enough to work closely with this gentle master of the historical art and conscientious teacher his passing has left a profound sense of loss. Philip Beeley Faculty of History, University of Oxford, Old Boys’ High School, George Street, Oxford OX1 2RL, UK E-mail address: [email protected] Available online 30 January 2014