O ensino e a pesquisa em matemática no Rio de Janeiro em meados do século XX: a trajetória acadêmica Carlos Alberto Aragão de Carvalho (1924–1982)

Abstract

The objective of this thesis is to analyze the mathematics course at the Faculdade Nacional de Filosofia (FNFi) of the Universidade do Brasil (UB) from its creation in 1939 until the end of the 1950s, a period in which postgraduate studies at universities, such as we know it today, did not exist. It is also of interest in this work to understand how the hiring of Brazilian and foreign professors occurred and whether there was research at FNFi. Based on the trajectory of the professor at that institution, Carlos Alberto Aragão de Carvalho, graduated at FNFi, the events that took place inside and outside the university are analyzed. Through this mathematician and in accordance to the new historiography of the sciences, it is possible to examine the circulation of ideas and teachers, scientific exchange, transnationalism and institutional history in the period covered. Aragão, among many other factors, at the beginning of his teaching career, stimulated the production of articles by his students through seminars (meetings held with the objective of encouraging students to research. They were not part of the mathematics course), got scholarships for some of them to study abroad, and went to France, sponsored by UNESCO, to specialize in a subject that was recent at that time. Aragão also has passed through several national and international teaching and research institutions besides his proposal of the creation of an international mathematical society. While working at FNFi, he sent documents to the director of that college in order to hire foreign teachers who would contribute to the teaching and research of mathematics in Rio de Janeiro. He also participated in the first two Brazilian Mathematical Colloquiums (CBM), helping to circulate his ideas that time, in an audience attended by mathematicians from different Brazilian states. Through Aragão, it is possible to visualize the formation process of a mathematical community. His participation as course coordinator and researcher at the Núcleo de Estudos e Pesquisas Científicas (NEPEC), created at FNFi, allow us to monitor the scientific and technological achievements from the work carried out by the members of this entity. The scientific biography in this thesis is not used as an end, but as a necessary means to understand an environment in which the process of institutionalization and professionalization of mathematics was still in its initial development.