On Thursday November 26th 2025, Elena Menta Oliva, a graduate in Philosophy and PhD candidate in the history of philosophy, gave a seminar entitled “The Materiality of the History of Mathematics in Museums”. The seminar was held in collaboration with the Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i la Tècnica (SCHCT).
The seminar is the result of his master's thesis in the history of science, completed at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and awarded a prize by the SCHCT in the professional category. As part of his master's degree, he did an internship at the Museu de Matemàtiques de Catalunya (MMACA). As a result of this work, he realised that introducing history into a mathematics museum was important. These museums are uncommon, as museums tend to be associated with art, the history of different cultures or science in general. It is difficult to imagine the materials, foundations and objectives displayed in a mathematics museum and its exhibitions. As Elena Menta stated, her work has contributed to building a history of this type of museum, as well as reflecting on what historical content can be added to its exhibition discourse. She explained that it was important to understand that mathematics is not independent of experience and history, but rather is knowledge that has been constructed through historical social practices, mediated by materiality.
The researcher explained that there are very few well-known mathematics museums in the world, although it is difficult to quantify them exactly. Among these museums are the MMACA in Catalonia, MoMath in New York, and Mathematikum in Germany. All of them have interactive elements and seek to educate and disseminate mathematics, as well as encourage people to learn it, generating a positive image of this discipline. She explained that most of them incorporate very few historical reflections or references, with the possible exception of the Italian museum, Giardino di Archimede. A different case is the French museum Maison Poincaré, since it is a mathematics museum integrated into a historical mathematical institution, so history does play a leading role. However, this museographic discourse is not applicable to other institutions that do not have a similar legacy. She argued that, in order to incorporate history into museums, one must first think about the story one wants to tell. One possibility of great interest is to take material culture from a historiographical perspective and then represent it through an exhibition unit.
Menta Oliva explained that she took the story from the Museu de Matemàtiques de Catalunya , which began as an initiative by secondary school mathematics teachers who developed teaching materials. Based on this, she drew up a proposal on how the interactive part of a museum could work, with different possibilities: using a button, virtual reality, sensory experiences by touching pieces, etc. This way of interacting depends on the objects and the space. Her proposal was based on the type of exhibition she wanted to show and, as she explained, in order to encourage interaction with a proposal linked to the history of mathematics, she chose the option of tactile manipulation.
The researcher developed the objectives of the exhibition unit:
1. Incorporate materials from the history of mathematics.
2. Allow visitors to experience mathematics as a mathematician would.
3. Convey specific historical content.
The proposed exhibition has seven modules. Each module has a mathematical idea or skill, historical reflections, and material.
- Writing materials: this module corresponds to the physical materials on which mathematics has been written, recorded and represented throughout history. Visitors can handle replicas of tablets that evoke very early historical media and, as a tactile experience, can engrave, carve, mark or write on them. In this way, visitors will reflect on the relationship between the origin of mathematics and certain materialities, i.e. that they are not just a mental creation.
- Abacuses: visitors will be able to handle replicas of different types of abacuses, such as the Roman abacus and the Japanese abacus. Based on this experience, the historical reflection will be to show the diversity of mathematical calculation and the role of the abacus as a professional tool.
- Compasses: visitors will experiment with the geometric construction made possible by the compass and will be able to handle replicas of historical compasses. Based on this, visitors will understand that the compass is a central tool in practical disciplines such as navigation and its relationship to theoretical and practical geometry. Visitors will receive different instructions in this activity.
- Blackboards: Visitors can use replicas of blackboards to write on, and their historical reflection would be to think about everyday life in mathematics and how teaching took place, since a blackboard is different from paper. It is interesting to note that bold letters must be indicated differently on blackboards than on computers or paper, and a double-lined N or Z is generally used when referring to mathematical sets.
- Punch cards: These are known for their use in computing and industrial applications, and as a mathematical idea, they will feature binary code and discrete instructions, so visitors can punch them and create codes that will produce actions and commands on these replica cards. The historical reflection will be on mathematical abstraction towards the material by forming patterns and sequences that can be found in everyday things.
- Calculators: for this module, the idea will be about mechanical algorithms and how arithmetic operations are implemented. The reflection is on their usefulness as an instrument and the automation of calculation, especially noting the differences between calculators and instruments such as the abacus, since one of the difficulties of this module (and that of computers) is that people know how to use these instruments. We will also talk about human calculators, women who performed calculations for NASA.
- Computers: in this module, visitors could observe dismantled machines and the idea would be related to logical processes, so that visitors could see how a computer is made and how information is processed. The historical reflection will be related to showing the materiality that we perceive today as virtual and the history of automated calculation. The activity will be a mathematical game: Conway's Game of Life.
The seminar concluded with a reflection on her proposal, explaining that she seeks to integrate history and practice, reinforcing the idea of touching on the material culture of science, that is, historical materials with the aim of learning and presenting narratives that make mathematics perceived as a concept that is not merely abstract.
Ivania Maturana, estudiante de prácticas extracurriculares del Máster Interuniversitario de Historia y Comunicación de la Ciencia
