A Mathematician's Journeys
Description
This book explores facets of Otto Neugebauer's career, his impact on the history and practice of mathematics, and the ways in which his legacy has been preserved or transformed in recent decades, looking ahead to the directions in which the study of the history of science will head in the twenty-first century. Neugebauer, more than any other scholar of recent times, shaped the way we perceive premodern science. Through his scholarship and influence on students and collaborators, he inculcated both an approach to historical research on ancient and medieval mathematics and astronomy through precise mathematical and philological study of texts, and a vision of these sciences as systems of knowledge and method that spread outward from the ancient Near Eastern civilizations, crossing cultural boundaries and circulating over a tremendous geographical expanse of the Old World from the Atlantic to India.
Reviews / Votes
"To anyone who is interested in Neugebauer's life and work (about which information is not always easy to obtain), with any of the current state of the fields to which Neugebauer so fruitfully contributed, A Mathematician's Journeys provides a collection of chapters that highlight various aspects of Neugebauer's life, work, and the historical subjects in which Neugebauer was interested . . this volume offers a rich variety of information on the life and works of Otto Neugebauer." (Annette Imhausen, London Mathematical Newsletter (LMS), newsletter.lms.ac.uk, Issue 467, March, 2017)"The editors Alexander Jones, Christine Proust, and John Steele are to be congratulated . on a volume filled with new and incisive observations on the twentieth century's central figure in the history of ancient mathematical and mathematical astronomical science. Each paper serves to illustrate a facet of the transformative effect on the study of ancient science of Neugebauer's research. A Mathematician's Journeys is a must read for anyone interested in the historiography of ancient science since the late nineteenth century." (Francesca Rochberg, Journal for the History of Astronomy, Vol. 48 (3), 2017)
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Content
From Graz to Göttingen: Neugebauer's Early Intellectual Journey.- "Not in Possession of Any Weltanschauung": Otto Neugebauer's Flight From Nazi Germany and his Search for Objectivity in Mathematics, in Reviewing, and in History.- Otto Neugebauer's Visits to Copenhagen and his Connection to Denmark.- Otto Neugebauer and Ancient Egypt.- As the Outsider Walked in: The Historiography of Mesopotamian Mathematics until Neugebauer.- François Thureau-Dangin and Cuneiform Mathematics.- Mathematical and Philological Insights on Cuneiform Texts: Neugebauer's Correspondence with Fellow Assyriologists.- After Neugebauer: Recent Developments in Mesopotamian Mathematics. - Babylonian Astronomy 1880 - 1950: The Players and the Field.- Neugebauer's Astronomical Cuneiform Texts and its Reception.- Translating Babylonian Mathematical Astronomy: Neugebauer and Beyond.