Table of Contents
1.0 Description
1.1 Purpose and standards
1.2 Languages
1.3 Netiquette
2.0 How to join/leave the forum
2.1 Subscribing - Membership Application
2.2 Unsubscribing
2.3 Your address
3.0 How to post a message
3.1 Address of [HM]
3.2 Cross-posting
3.3 Subject line
3.4 Body of message
3.5 Post from the web
4.0 Archives of postings
4.1 Math Forum
4.2 Mathematics Archives
5.0 Members of [HM]
1.0 Description
1.1 Purpose and standards
The purpose of this list is to provide a virtual forum for
scholarly discussion of the HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS (in a
broad sense), amongst professionals, and non-professionals
with a serious interest in the field.
All scholarly aspects of the history may be discussed, and
in addition such issues as:
* History/Philosophy of History of Mathematics
* Current trends in the History of Mathematics
* Ethnomathematics
* History of mathematics in teaching mathematics
* Origin of mathematical terms/symbols
* Biographies and obituaries
* Bibliographical references (databases)
* Advertisements of new books, articles, videos... [*]
* Reviews of these items
* Announcements of conferences, meetings, jobs ...
[*] A courtesy copy of these books, articles or videos to
the host of this forum would be most welcome.
Pertinent queries, replies, comments ... should be written
with the same standards of thoughtfulness and care that
apply to other scholarly activities.
At any event, subscribers should strive to submit posts in
a supreme and conscious effort to keep the signal-to-noise
ratio so high as possible.
1.2 Languages
Messages should preferably be sent in English as a courte-
sy to the non-Spanish speaking list members, although the
list is officially bilingual (Spanish and English).
Postings in other languages (e.g. French, German, Italian,
Portuguese) are also welcome. But, in this case, whenever
a long email is sent out, an abstract in English would be
highly appreciated.
Although we do not think we should encourage too many lan-
guages on this forum (since many listmembers might just be
monoglots), the list is to be open to those contributors
who wish to communicate in their mother tongue, and do not
feel confident enough in other languages.
If you are not familiar with the language of a post, but
you suspect that the topic discussed is relevant, for
instance, to your own field of study (some keywords in the
email may suggest that), a solution somehow will be found
- at least, we hope so.
If you are not sufficiently interested in that thread, you
may simply hit the 'delete' key.
1.3 Netiquette
Ego trips will mean trips outside the list.
Whereas freedom of speech is wonderful, and discussion of
controversial issues on the history of mathematics is to
be expected (and welcome!), personal invective cannot take
place on this forum. From the beginning, it must be stated
very emphatically that either misuse or abuse of the list,
in a way or another, will cause cancellation of the sub-
scription by the Director of [HM].
The list cannot be used to send either commercial or junk-
mail of any kind -- this includes unsolicited commercial
advertisements, viruses warnings, chain letters.
If someone submits a posting that seems to be rather off-
topic or of dubious relevance to the list, PLEASE do not
send complaints to the whole list. Contact the list owner
instead.
2.0 How to join/leave the list
2.1 Subscribing - Membership Application
The Director of [HM] must approve each subscription. Those
interested in joining our professional discussion list are
encouraged to fill out the membership form. Click the link
below:
http://chasque.apc.org/jgc/listmembers
If you do not have Internet access, or still you do not
feel comfortably enough with the web resources, you may
receive the membership form by electronic mail. If so, or
you ever need to get in contact with the listowner, please
send an email to
owner-historia-matematica@chasque.apc.org
Please, note the following code for membership classes.
Class 1: Web Readers (registration unnecessary). They can
read ongoing discussions here. Most of [HM] added services
are not available.
Class 2: Regular Members (registered). They receive indivi-
dual postings, and they are also allowed to submit messages
to the forum.
Class 3: Digest Members (registered). This discussion forum
is also available in digest version. Therefore, instead of
receiving each email as an individual posting, [HM] Digest
Members will receive a group of messages clumped together
as a digest, usually one per day. They are entitled to send
messages to the forum.
Class 4: Regular & Digest Members (registered); classes 2 &
3 together.
Class 5: Guest Members (registered). These subscribers are
allowed to send postings to [HM], but they will not receive
messages from the list. They can follow ongoing discussions
here.
2.2 Unsubscribing
2.2.1 Regular version
If you ever want to remove yourself from the regular list
you can send an email to
majordomo@chasque.apc.org
with the following command in the body of your message:
unsubscribe historia-matematica
2.2.2 Digest version
If you ever want to remove yourself from the digest format
of this list you can send an email to
majordomo@chasque.apc.org
with the following command in the body of your message:
unsubscribe historia-matematica-digest
2.3 Your address
For several reasons, our list-server, Majordomo, is set up
to reject commercial web-mail addresses (e.g. excite.com,
hotmail.com, mixmail.com, yahoo.com, etc.). Therefore, if
you are interested in subscribing to our discussion forum,
you should provide a non-commercial email address.
If your email address changes, please make sure that our
records are updated. Otherwise, you will not be able to
use the commands of Majordomo such as "unsubscribe", and
you may have problems to get your posts through the list.
If your server bounces messages for more than three days
you will be unsubscribed. When the problem is fixed, you
may subscribe again.
3.0 How to post a message
3.1 Address of [HM]
To submit a post to our discussion forum, send an email to
historia-matematica@chasque.apc.org
PLEASE, check the message headers before sending your post
so that you actually know where your message is going.
Our [HM] list is set up to send replies to everyone on the
list.
3.2 Crossposting
Cross-posting (that is to say, sending a post to more than
one discussion list or newsgroup at the same time) is dis-
couraged.
If after reflection you decide to send a posting to more
than one forum, PLEASE submit your messages as entirely
separate emails.
A strong reason for rejecting cross-posting is that our
mailing list is configured so that only [HM] members can
post (with the only exception of occasional guests).
If cross-posting were accepted onto [HM], then people sub-
scribed to other forums might reply to our list as well,
which might cause fragmentation of the thread. Postings
to many forums often lead to discussions where members of
each list see only a part of the ongoing exchanges, and
this usually leads to confusion or misunderstandings.
I strongly encourage you to choose the appropriate list.
3.3 Subject line
The subject line should be meaningful and informative so
that people can get a rough - but a good - idea about the
subject of your message.
When you start a new thread, for instance,
First incommensurables
'Majordomo' attaches the prefix [HM] to your subject line,
so that your posting will be sent out and archived as
[HM] First incommensurables
If anyone wants to post a follow-up on this thread, s/he
is encouraged to write any of the following subject lines:
Re: [HM] First incommensurables
[HM] First incommensurables
First incommensurables
Nevertheless, the subject line
Re: First incommensurables
is not appropriate, since generates another thread; namely
[HM] Re: First incommensurables
This has the effect that your response (with a new subject
line) is not linked in the archives (at Swarthmore Forum)
with the original posting and so it is harder to locate or
thread the reactions to the original message.
Besides, do not write "RE:" (or other prefixes) instead of
"Re:". Please, use the previous subject line with the same
capitalization, etc. as was used before. This convention
makes it helpful for the archiving software (at Swarthmore
Forum) to sort postings by subject.
I strongly encourage listmembers NOT to change the subject
lines unless there is good reason. Now, if over the course
of a discussion, the subject evolves considerably it would
be wise to change the subject line accordingly.
3.4 Body of message
When replying to a post, it is fine to quote the relevant
text of the original message, so people reading your reply
know the context.
PLEASE, edit your messages properly, and do not quote
irrelevant segments of a previous posting when replying.
Mind that it is unnecessary (and inconvenient) to cite the
entire message, as everyone on the discussion group will
have received a copy of the original post. This reasonable
practice saves downloading time, reading time, disc space,
and also helps with a better presentation of the digest.
Some email programs send out email in formats which cannot
be read by other mailers. PLEASE, configure your mailer so
that your messages are delivered in plain text (and NOT in
enriched text such as 'html' output). Moreover, refrain
from putting non-standard symbols (such as special ALT
characters) into your contributions.
The use of accents is strongly discouraged. If you think
that a specific reference requires accents, then a code
would be advisable. For instance:
/ acute accent [matema/tica := matemática]
\ grave accent [alge\bre := algèbre]
, cedilla [lec,on := leçon]
~ tilde [an~o := año]
" umlaut [Ko"rper := Körper]
^ circumflex [polyno^me := polynôme]
NEVER submit attachments to the list, which are a particu-
lar problem to many subscribers, not only because of their
format, but also because of their size.
Before sending a mail, contributors should ask themselves
the following crucial question:
"Is my posting relevant to the purpose of this forum?"
If you are not quite sure whether your post is appropriate
to this forum, please drop the list owner a private email.
3.5 Post from the web
Whether you are a list-member or a guest you may also send
us your contribution from the web. Click here.
4.0 Archives of postings
Two websites kindly host archives of all contributions:
4.1 Math Forum
http://mathforum.com/epigone/historia_matematica
4.2 Mathematics Archives
Please, mind that the archiving service at
http://archives.math.utk.edu/hypermail/historia/
is offline and is no longer operational. It was taken off-
line as of October 13, 2000.
5.0 Members of [HM]
If you are member of this forum, you can review who are subscribed.
Click here.
Julio Gonzalez Cabillon
Director of [HM]
P.S.: The Director of [HM] reserves the right to modify these guide-
lines at any time. Suggestions and feedback about this discussion
group would be most welcome. Many thanks.
Montevideo, Thursday, 08-Jan-2026 21:19:00 UYT.
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