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I was curious about Bolyai's appendix itself and was intrigued to see it was originally in Latin (https://www.unesco.org/en/memory-world/janos-bolyai-appendix-s
by BWStearns 3y ago
I was curious about Bolyai's appendix itself and was intrigued to see it was originally in Latin (https://www.unesco.org/en/memory-world/janos-bolyai-appendix-scientiam-spatii-absolute-veram-exhibens-maros-vasarhelyini-1832 https://www.unesco.org/en/memory-world/janos-bolyai-appendix...). I'm not a math expert by any stretch (nor a historian of math) but I had thought that German had become the lingua franca of mathematics by that point. Does anyone know if Latin was still the default for math in 1832?
- guiraldelli 3y agoLooking at Gauss publications [1], it seems he was publishing in Latin as far as the 1840s. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss#Writings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss#Writings
- bandie91 3y agoHungary was under Austrian rule (German-speaking) which many disliked, including the lower nobility. Maybe this also played a role in preferring Latin over German.