Thanks to a collective and transversal analysis, the objective of FONDASCIENCE is to study the role of philanthropic foundations in the development of scientific research from 1910 to 1956, by exploiting archives that have been little questioned or even totally unpublished until now. The starting hypothesis is that the structuring of current French public research was born of the close association between a few foundations/funds/associations and a handful of influential scientists. Numerous works in the field of social history or art history have been devoted to the patronage and philanthropy of financial, commercial or industrial dynasties in the 19th and 20th centuries. On the other hand, few studies exist on philanthropic foundations dedicated to science. Similarly, while the question of the weight of provincial scientific institutions in relation to Paris has been reassessed since the 1980s, the question of Paris/province patronage remains unexplored. Numerous foundations and their achievements, such as the IBPC, constitute a blind spot in the history of research, just as there are still grey areas for the period of the Second World War. The project is structured along three lines: 1) a cross-analysis of scientific philanthropic foundations (1910-1939) in France and Belgium to sketch out a map of philanthropic regimes and to identify, if possible, some "models"; 2) a study of the period 1927-1939 of the Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique (IBPC), which was created by Jean Perrin and Edmond James de Rothschild. This study will question the interdisciplinarity promoted by an innovative methodology based on an unpublished corpus, as well as the insertion of the institute into its scientific, institutional and geographical environment (Montagne Sainte-Geneviève); 3) the positioning of the foundations in a new context where public scientific research is emerging and being structured (1939-1956, -colloque de Caen-). In addition to the exploitation of original sources (Rothschild bank archive (Roubaix), The Rothschild Archive (London), Rockefeller Archive Center (New York State), Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique (Brussels), Institut Henri Poincaré, IBPC, Instituts Pasteur of Lille and Paris, etc.), the project is characterized by a resolutely cross-cutting approach, and by varying the scales from the local to the national and international. It relies on the constitution of prosopographic databases. Moreover, the specific study of the IBPC will be part of the historiographic current of the "material turn" by combining written, visual and material sources (and not their simple juxtaposition). The project will also ensure the permanent protection of these unpublished archives (digitization) and their valorization in an open science approach: publications in French and international journals, a reference book, a research notebook, prosopographical databases, an online exhibition, and a conference. Coordinated by the Director of the IBPC, three complementary teams bring together specialists in the history of interactions between science, industry and states, the history of innovation, public and private finance, public research, patronage and philanthropy, scientific institutions, architecture, and visual and material studies. Beyond the originality of its subject, scientific philanthropy, FONDASCIENCE is innovative in that it posits that, alongside the State and scientists, philanthropy has played a decisive role in the evolution and structuring of public research. It will also allow for a better understanding of the driving forces behind the organization of French research over the long term and thus contribute to its current evolution and debates.

Thanks to a collective and transversal analysis, the objective of FONDASCIENCE is to study the role of philanthropic foundations in the development of scientific research from 1910 to 1956, by exploiting archives that have been little questioned or even totally unpublished until now. The starting hypothesis is that the structuring of current French public research was born of the close association between a few foundations/funds/associations and a handful of influential scientists. Numerous works in the field of social history or art history have been devoted to the patronage and philanthropy of financial, commercial or industrial dynasties in the 19th and 20th centuries. On the other hand, few studies exist on philanthropic foundations dedicated to science. Similarly, while the question of the weight of provincial scientific institutions in relation to Paris has been reassessed since the 1980s, the question of Paris/province patronage remains unexplored. Numerous foundations and their achievements, such as the IBPC, constitute a blind spot in the history of research, just as there are still grey areas for the period of the Second World War. The project is structured along three lines: 1) a cross-analysis of scientific philanthropic foundations (1910-1939) in France and Belgium to sketch out a map of philanthropic regimes and to identify, if possible, some "models"; 2) a study of the period 1927-1939 of the Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique (IBPC), which was created by Jean Perrin and Edmond James de Rothschild. This study will question the interdisciplinarity promoted by an innovative methodology based on an unpublished corpus, as well as the insertion of the institute into its scientific, institutional and geographical environment (Montagne Sainte-Geneviève); 3) the positioning of the foundations in a new context where public scientific research is emerging and being structured (1939-1956, -colloque de Caen-). In addition to the exploitation of original sources (Rothschild bank archive (Roubaix), The Rothschild Archive (London), Rockefeller Archive Center (New York State), Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique (Brussels), Institut Henri Poincaré, IBPC, Instituts Pasteur of Lille and Paris, etc.), the project is characterized by a resolutely cross-cutting approach, and by varying the scales from the local to the national and international. It relies on the constitution of prosopographic databases. Moreover, the specific study of the IBPC will be part of the historiographic current of the "material turn" by combining written, visual and material sources (and not their simple juxtaposition). The project will also ensure the permanent protection of these unpublished archives (digitization) and their valorization in an open science approach: publications in French and international journals, a reference book, a research notebook, prosopographical databases, an online exhibition, and a conference. Coordinated by the Director of the IBPC, three complementary teams bring together specialists in the history of interactions between science, industry and states, the history of innovation, public and private finance, public research, patronage and philanthropy, scientific institutions, architecture, and visual and material studies. Beyond the originality of its subject, scientific philanthropy, FONDASCIENCE is innovative in that it posits that, alongside the State and scientists, philanthropy has played a decisive role in the evolution and structuring of public research. It will also allow for a better understanding of the driving forces behind the organization of French research over the long term and thus contribute to its current evolution and debates.

This project studies, from a historical point of view, the processes of patrimonialization of which mathematics was the object, from the 18th to the 20th century, via printed media gathering what is worth preserving in terms of mathematical knowledge (encyclopedias, specialized or generalist dictionaries, complete works of mathematicians, collections of treatises and manuals) or intended to gather and index a part of the knowledge already produced (libraries, bibliographic indexes). By studying these processes over time and from a social and cultural history perspective that mobilizes local, national and international scales, the project aims to understand what constitutes mathematical heritage at a given time and for a given community, how it is created through selection, appropriation, and adaptation of knowledge and practices, and how a heritage is mobilized in order to practice mathematics, to build the identity of a group or to legitimize the discipline. The period studied (from the 18th to the 20th century) and the large geographical scale (France, Great Britain, the United States, Italy) allow us to inscribe this process in the long term and to take into account the diversity of social logics that preside over the constitution of mathematical heritages (professional circles, teaching, general public). The project is based on a reflection on digital humanities, as a tool of patrimonlaiization but also as a research tool for SHS works and as a communication tool allowing a large public to have access to a more and more important part of the cultural and scientific heritage. The creation and the animation of a digital platform allow us to take advantage of these possibilities, but also to revive and to make known to a large public, in particular teachers, unknown parts of the mathematical heritage, The project addresses the heritage of mathematics according to three complementary issues, in which quantitative analyses and case-based approaches are combined: - Heritage dynamics and communities: The project aims at identifying and listing, notably by means of a bibliographic and biographical knowledge base, various heritage groups according to periods and geographical and/or socio-professional spaces. For this purpose, it relies on dictionaries and encyclopedias specifically dedicated to mathematics, as well as the inclusion of mathematics in publications of this type intended for specific communities (engineers, craftsmen, women, etc.) or for a large public, both in France and abroad, - Patrimonialization by selection and accumulation: supports, places and actors The project also proposes to write a history from below of the forms of patrimonialization of mathematics, aiming at restoring the interactions of individual, collective and institutional logics, in order to understand the processes of constitution of heritages (selection, constraints, classification, inventories), the stakes of these initiatives (preservation, transmission, delimitation of domains) and their uses (learning, construction of new knowledge, memory). - Legitimization of heritage and memory of mathematics. Based on a detailed study of the heritage trajectories of particular mathematical knowledge, the project will reveal the modes of legitimization of what constitutes, in a given social space, "good" knowledge and "good" practices, the re-actualization that this legitimization allows and the forms of oblivion that it induces. The examination of the posterity of the actors and actresses of mathematics will lead us to question the processes of construction of genealogies and filiations, and the role of " figures of mathematicians" in the construction of values and identities associated with mathematics.