The UMI Archives – Debates in the Italian Mathematical Community, 1922-1938

The Archives of the Unione Matematica Italiana (Italian Mathematical Union, UMI), located at the Dipartimento di Matematica of the Bologna University, has been recently reorganized and will be soon opened to scholars. It consists of two parts: a historical covering the period from 1921 to the mid-fifties, and a modern part reaching from 1967 until today. This paper focuses on the historical part containing two sections: a first section with documents listed in the old Inventory of the UMI Archives, concerning the years 1921-1933 and 1939-1943; a second section kept in a box labelled “Correspondence relating to the Italian Mathematical Union 1938-1950. Do not open before the year 2000”. The latter is a non-inventoried archive (sealed files, “fondo secretato”) and contains 14 files from the years 1938-1952. It was forbidden to consult this section most likely to avoid the premature disclosure of documents relating to UMI’s unseemly reaction following the Racial Laws. This part mostly consists of the correspondence of Enrico Bompiani, vice-president of the UMI from 1938 to 1948 and president from 1948 to 1952. In order to hide proofs that the UMI collaborated with the fascist regime, some documents have most probably been removed. As we try to show in this paper, the documents of the UMI Archives highlight new significant aspects of the history of the UMI, in particular the attitude of the Italian Mathematical Union towards the fascist regime and the Racial Laws (1938), by enriching or completing the existing literature on the relationships between mathematicians and fascism. They moreover provide useful information on the international context of the inter-war period, when mathematicians tried with difficulty to reconstitute scientific internationalism interrupted by the First World War.