Czech and Polish Mathematicians Facing the Choice Between Transnational and Slavic Contacts

Abstract

The paper examines the forming of national academic communities in successor states and in the situation after the First World War when scholars (mainly those working in life sciences) participated in the scientific legitimisation of the emerging states. The young generation of scientists faced the question of how prestigious the tradition of contacts with Slavic scholars was and if it was justifiable to limit contacts with German scientists. The author points out the need for examining academic networks, social interaction of scholars, and the transfer of scientific knowledge to qualitatively assess the development of different disciplines of science. Using the example of Czech mathematicians, the author demonstrates their efforts in establishing professional and social contacts with German mathematicians, although in the academic world after the First World War these relations were otherwise officially limited. Czech mathematicians, however, did not want to stay behind in the dynamic development of new theoretical disciplines (e.g. non-Euclidean geometry or topology) and limit the relations to those with their Slavic counterparts, even though the cooperation with the Polish School of Mathematics was still valuable to them. The author of the paper asks to what extent this was the case of the generation of scientists starting their career in the interwar period, namely Václav Hlavatý or Eduard Čech, and concludes that in the history of science it is necessary to distinguish between strategies and social communication of scholars in the disciplines of formal and natural science. The subject is approached from the perspective of transnational history and the formation of Czech and Polish academic networks.