International congresses of mathematicians

Abstract

ZuHch 1994 one of only four participants from abroad. Since that first meeting, twenty-three International Congresses have been held, the most recent taking place in Berlin last summer. In recent times, several ICMs have been commemorated by postage stamps. The fwst of these was the Moscow congress of 1966, attended by 4000 mathematicians from 49 countries. Twelve years later, the congress in Helsinki attracted delegates from 83 countries. In 1982 a set of four stamps was issued to commemorate the International Congress in Warsaw. This set featured the mathematicians Stefan Banach, Wac~aw Sierpifiski, Stanisfaw Zaremba and Zygmunt Janiszewski (see the Stamp Corner, Vol. 14, No. 2). In the event, the uncertain political situation necessitated the postponement of the congress to 1983. The first ICM to be held outside Europe or North America took place in 1990, in Kyoto. The design of the commemorative stamp shows an origami polyhedron. In 1994 the congress was held for the second time in ZtLrich. The commemorative stamp features Jakob Bernoulli and his law of large numbers; the likeness of Bernoulli was taken from a portrait painted by his brother Nicholas. The design for the 1998 congress stamp consists of a solution of the 'squaring-the-rectangle' problem of dividing a rectangle with integer sides into unequal squares with integer sides. The background consists of spirals made up from the decimal digits of ~-.