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This is to announce that the History of Math and Science StackExchange proposal on Area 51 has entered the "commit" stage. You can read more about the proposal here and see the proposal itself here.

In the commitment stage, a certain number of users must "commit" to using the site, which is simply a pledge to use it when the beta launches. Once enough people have done this, the beta version of the site will launch.

Here are some of the top mathematics example questions on the proposal:

  • What is the earliest reference for the Prime Number Theorem (as a conjecture)? And, what were earlier or opposing believes regarding this question?

  • Was the introduction of higher-dimensional spaces controversial, like the introduction of complex numbers?

  • Which attempts were made to formalize differentiation and integration before the modern limit definition?

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    $\begingroup$ This is great news! MathOverflow has had a history of mathematics history questions which many people felt were outside the scope of MO, so this is a wonderful addition and I hope it takes off. $\endgroup$
    – Todd Trimble Mod
    Apr 20, 2014 at 11:37
  • $\begingroup$ Yes, I agree with Todd. We would have to collectively decide which math history question are still acceptable on MO (if any), and which should be moved to that new SE. $\endgroup$
    – Joël
    Apr 26, 2014 at 22:13
  • $\begingroup$ @Joël Well, we're not quite there yet! We're still only 30% of the way to a beta, and beta SEs routinely get cancelled due to insufficient activity even after they launch. So tell your friends, come one come all, etc etc plug plug $\endgroup$
    – Jack M
    Apr 26, 2014 at 22:26

1 Answer 1

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I'm pleased to announce that on October 28, 2014, History of Science and Mathematics Stack Exchange1 entered private beta. On November 10, 2014, it entered public beta. As of this posting, it is 226 days old and going strong.

Hi, I'm HDE 226868, one of the pro tempore moderators on HSM. I'm posting this "answer" here as something of a thank-you to Math Overflow. We've had two questions migrated from MO to HSM:

Both of them went over quite well; the latter is one of the highest-voted and highest-viewed questions on HSM. Our thanks go out to Math Overflow for the migrations. They certainly helped HSM by drawing attention to it via those questions. We're a small site in comparison to MO, and much younger, so any attention that a popular question brings is quite welcome indeed. Thank you.

This answer also serves as a status update. We're doing pretty well, given that the topic at hand is something of a niche category. Our top tag is , used on 174 questions (out of 482); more questions may fall into the domain of mathematics but do not use the tag. Our Number 2 user in terms of reputation (and most active user), Alexandre Eremenko, is originally from MO, and there are many others that are active on both sites. I encourage more to come and check the site out.

But overall, thank you, Math Overflow, for the questions migrated, and for the users who sprang to help HSM.


1 We managed to get the title changed from "Math" to "Mathematics" soon after we entered beta.

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