====================== HES POSTING ====================== 
 
Participants in this thread may be interested in an exactly parallel 
set of discussions a few years ago among historians of mathematics. 
The eminent Joseph W. Dauben responded to Andre Weil's 1988 Helsinki 
International Congress talk which suggested that "The craft of 
mathematical history can best be practiced by those of us who are or 
who have been active mathematicians", or as Dauben says "...only 
mathematicians like [Weil] himself were qualified to write history of 
mathematics, and the better the mathematician, the better the history 
was likely to be ..." [pace Paul Samuelson on Whig History(?)] 
 
See Dauben's "Mathematics: An Historian's Perspective" in Chikara, 
Mitsuo, and Dauben, (eds.) _The Intersection of History and 
Mathematics_ .Boston: Birkhauser, 1994. 
 
E. Roy Weintraub, Professor of Economics 
Director, Center for Social and Historical Studies of Science 
Duke University, Box 90097 
Durham, North Carolina 27708-0097 
 
Phone and voicemail: (919) 660-1838 
Fax: (919) 684-8974 
E-mail: [log in to unmask] 
URL: http://www.econ.duke.edu/~erw/erw.homepage.html 
 
================ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ================ 
For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]