The symposium will examine the influence of patronage on the production of mathematics from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. We shall consider the role and motivation of the patron (individual or institutional), the benefit for the recipient and for the benefactor, and the overall effect on the development of mathematics and its relations to bordering disciplines. We shall also be concerned with the extent to which patronage broadened accessibility to mathematical knowledge, and its effect on the mathematical community at large. Among the more general topics to be discussed are historical shifts between private and public patronage of mathematics. Considering stimuli for knowledge production outside mathematics and science proper (such as patronage) allows for a better understanding of the processes of application, i.e. for “knowledge at work” in a broad sense.