Some Advances in Mathematics in China

Abstract

Modern mathematics researches arose in China at the beginning of the 20th century and developed gradually. Till the early 1930s, however, the number of scholars who were engaged in modern mathematics teaching and research was very limited, and among them Hu Dunfu, Feng Zuxun, Hiong King-lai, Chen Kien-Kong, Chiang Li-fu, Yang Ko-Chuen, Su Buchin, and Kiang Tsai-Han were the leading persons. The 1930s were a crucial period in the development of modern mathematics in China. The Chinese Mathematical Society was founded in 1935, and in the next year, Acta of Chinese Mathematical Society (predecessor of “Acta Mathematica Sinica”) and “Journal of Mathematics” (predecessor of “Mathematics Bulletin”) were launched. Even during the anti-Japanese war, under the difficult conditions in the rear, Chinese mathematicians never stopped mathematical research and teaching. Later in 1947, the Institute of Mathematics of Central Academy was set up in Shanghai. According to statistics, before 1949, less than 80 Chinese scholars published about 300 mathematical papers in total. The founding of the People's Republic of China brought great changes into mathematical researches and education. Since 1978, mathematics researches became the order of the day, while groups of young mathematical talents came out, and mathematics publications and academic exchanges boomed up. Some of the most outstanding achievements in the field of mathematics include “The theory of functions of several complex variables in classical domains,” “Researches on characteristic classes and embedding classes,” “Symplectic geometric algorithm of Hamiltonian systems,” “Researches on Goldbach conjecture,” and “The stabilities of differentiable dynamical system.”