In Foreign Lands: The Migration of Scientists for Political or Economic Reasons

This proceedings volume collects the stories of mathematicians and scientists who have spent and developed parts of their careers and life in countries other than those of their origin. The reasons may have been different in different periods but were often driven by political or economic circumstances: The lack of suitable employment opportunities in their home countries, adverse political systems, and wars have led to the emigration of scientists. The volume shows that these movements have played an important role in spreading scientific knowledge and have often changed the scientific landscape, tradition and future of studies and research fields.

The book analyses in particular: aspects of Euler's, Lagrange's and Boscovich's scientific biographies, migrations of scientists from France, Spain and Greece to Russia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and from Russia to France in the twentieth century, exiles from Italy before the Italian Risorgimento, migrations inside Europe and the escape of mathematicians from Nazi-fascist Europe, between the two World Wars, as well as the mobility of experts around the world.

It includes selected contributions from the symposium In Foreign Lands: The Migration of Scientists for Political or Economic Reasons held at the Conference of the International Academy of the History of Science in Athens (September 2019).

Contenu

Leonhard Euler in St. Petersburg and in Berlin.- Lagrange's Mathematical Life in Berlin and Paris. A Reappraisal.- Delisle Brothers in Russia: Victims of Historiography and of Scorbut.- A Corfiot Scientist in the Russian Empire: the Case of Nikephoros Theotokis (1731-1800).- Boscovich and the Matter about the Mediterranean Harbours.- An Enlightened Expert on the Move and the Globalization of Civil Engineering : Augustin Betancourt (1756-1824).- The Migration of Italian Mathematicians between the XVIII and XIX Centuries.- Guglielmo Libri, Mathematician, Historian, Collector, Patriot, and Liberal.- The spread of scientific knowledge and technology transfer: André Coyne (1891-1960) and the construction of dams in 20th century Portugal.- On the emigration of Russian mathematicians during the revolutionary and post-revolutionary events of the 1910s and 20s.- Exile's experts. Some considerations on the activity of the Russian Academic Group in Paris.- Roads of Russian emigrant zoologists.- Aldo Mieli (1879-1950) and the origin of the History of Science in Spain: From the Creation to the Dissolution of the Spanish Group.- Jewish mathematicians and their escape from Nazi Germany from 1933 on and their ways into exile.- Czechoslovakia - A Good Place to Live? Immigration and Emigration from the Viewpoint of Mathematicians.- Jewish intellectual diaspora and the circulation of mathematics: Alessandro Terracini in Argentina (1939-1948).- Physical chemistry in Greece before and after World War II as a case study for the role of politics on science and scientists.