History of Science and Mathematics moderator here. We've talked it over and we've sent the question back to Math Overflow (I closed it as off-topic on HSM, so that should bounce it back to MO automatically).

We've had a lot of conversations with other STEM sites about their policies on historical questions and what any migration process would look like. I think the big takeaway for me is that these questions really have to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. What that means in practice is that meta discussions for each question can be quite valuable. There's often a fine line between questions that should be send to HSM and questions that should not - it's hard to capture the nuance of that in a few comments.

This case is a great example of that in action. I agree with this meta consensus - the required degree of technical expertise means the question will do better on Math Overflow.

History of Science and Mathematics moderator here. We've talked it over and have just sent the question back to Math Overflow (I closed it as off-topic on HSM, so that should bounce it back to MO automatically).

Over the last six years, we've had a lot of conversations with other STEM sites about their chosen policies on historical questions and what any migration process between those sites and HSM would look like. I think the big takeaway for me is that these questions really have to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. What that means in practice is that meta discussions for each question can be quite valuable. There's often a fine line between questions that should be send to HSM and questions that should not - it's hard to capture the nuance of that in a few comments.

This case is a great example of that in action. I agree with this meta consensus - the fact that the key points are largely mathematical in nature indicates that Math Overflow is the better home. And, yes, appreciating the connections fully requires knowing some nontrivial mathematics.