Chapter 6: Snapshots from the 1960s: Tensions and Synergies in the Emerging of New Trends in Mathematics Education

In September 1997 a school teacher in California posed to the web Discussion List on the History of Mathematics² the following question: “What happened in mathematics in the year 1968?” The reason for this question was an interdisciplinary theme weekend on the year 1968 planned in his school (grades 9–12, academically strong). I have recorded four answers. One mentioned the final computations made and programmed to send a manned vehicle from the earth to its moon, and then return. The second pointed out that 1968 was the year of the famous month-long Global Analysis summer school at Berkeley. The writer also evoked vividly the particular climate of the hippie period in this University. For another respondent 1968 was the year in which V. Kac and R. Moody independently introduced and classified the class of Lie algebras now called Kac-Moody algebras. The last responder resorted to St Andrew Archive³ and found that in 1968 the following known mathematicians died: S. N. Bernstein, J. F. A. Delsarte, A. O. Gelfond, L. D. Landau (1962 Nobel Prize for physics), K. Loewner, L. Roth.