ABSTRACT
THUS ADOLF HURWITZ addressed the partici-pants in the first International Congress held in Zurich in 1897. The point raised by Hurwitz, although obvious and well-known to mathematicians, might surprise the general public or even other scientists. Mathematics has traditionally been pictured as an abstruse, austere, and solitary science. This image arises from the combination of its encrypted expression together with a meek acceptance of its veracity by the layman. Also contributing to this image is a gallery of pictures of mathematicians ranging from the absent-minded savant to the daft scientist. This is how Livy showed us Archimedes, “leaning over some drawing he had made on the ground” as he is being murdered by the soldiers of the Consul Marcellus in Syracuse (see page 2). Or we may remember Georg Cantor continually visiting the Nervenklinik at the end of his life, or Kurt Go¨del starving himself to death at Princeton.
