Scientific information services provider FIZ Karlsruhe, Germany, has released its new information brochure - A Focus on Mathematics - on the occasion of the German Year of Mathematics. The publication is dedicated to 140 years of knowledge management in mathematics. Ten articles by expert authors span the bridge from the beginnings of the documentation of scientific results in the Jahrbuch der Fortschritte der Mathematik (1868) to today's mathematical online portals and databases.
FIZ Karlsruhe, a non-profit service institution which has been a partner for information transfer and knowledge management in science and industry for more than 30 years, has close connections to mathematics. On its foundation in 1977, the editorial departments of Zentralblatt der Mathematik and Zentralblatt für die Didaktik der Mathematik became part of FIZ Karlsruhe.
Together with partners in Germany and abroad, the institution produces other mathematical information services besides ZMATH, and all of these are offered online. The new brochure presents FIZ Karlsruhe's entire service spectrum in mathematics. The articles on electronic sources of information are complemented by practical examples illustrating how information retrieved from databases can be used in biographical research (taking the mathematician Wolfgang Doeblin as an example); for finding solutions to long-term problems (four colour conjecture and four colour theorem); or for handling unexpected mathematical applications (cryptography and Turing machines).
A Focus on Mathematics is part of FIZ Karlsruhe's series of special publications on current research topics. The brochure is available for free download at http://www.fiz-karlsruhe.de/publications.html.
