The Hamburg Mathematical Society was founded in 1690 by Heinrich Meissner as the “Kunstrechnungsübende Societät”. It is the oldest still-active mathematical society in the world, and the second-oldest scientific society in Germany after the Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, which was founded in 1652.

The ‘Kunstrechnungsliebende Societät’ did not originate as a society of the “learned society” type which exists today but rather a society for writing and calculating masters whose task was to teach practical counting in schools to those who would enter commercial occupations or study at a university.

The early society aimed at spreading mathematical art as widely as possible to anyone who was interested in calculation. Those applying for membership in the new Society had to sit an entrance examination to demonstrate their knowledge of how to solve quadratic and cubic problems, as well as their understanding of the basics of Euclidean geometry and Euclid’s theory of irrational numbers. This was a demanding requirement and few school teachers would have been able to come up to this level. The new Society, therefore, had rather few members, in fact, there were only fifteen founding members, six of whom came from Hamburg. The members were mostly interested in writing textbooks and they would support each other in that task.

Two asteroids, 449 Hamburga, and 454 Mathesis, were given their names at an anniversary celebration of the society in 1901.

Hamburg Mathematical Society’s journal is the Mitteilungen der Mathematischen Gesellschaft in Hamburg. It began publications in 1881, succeeding a listing of society talks that had been sent out to members since 1873.

According to the Wikipedia/ mathshistory