The Formulario between Mathematics and History

For almost twenty years, from 1888 to 1908, Peano devoted all his energies to formulating and realising a project, which throughout his life he was to acknowledge as one of the most important results of his mathematical research

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. This was the

Formulaire de Mathématiques

, a huge collection of mathematical propositions expressed in symbols, especially written with his own logic, capable of concentrating in a single volume the knowledge of mathematics of his time. To this end, Peano founded a journal and invited to collaborate on it scholars, assistants, colleagues at the University and at the military Academy, teachers and other mathematicians in Italy and abroad. His total commitment to this enterprise was also accompanied by his voluntary decision to leave his post as Professor of infinitesimal Calculus at the military Academy

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, keeping only his University position, and by the purchase of a printing press so that he could set up the text himself, in view of the difficulties that the mathematical symbols created for the publishing houses

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.