Biographical Memoirs Volume 75 (1998) / Chapter Skim
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Otto E. Neugebauer
Otto E. Neugebauer
Pages 214-239
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productive scholar of the history of the exact sciences, perhaps of the history of science, of our age. He began as a mathematician, turned first to Egyptian and Babylonian mathematics, en c!
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in government bonds, through the Austrian hyperinflation, en c! he spent a miserable winter with little foot!
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I Stenzel as co-eclitors, Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte tier Mathematik, Astronomic und Physik (QS)
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to Extraorclinarius, founclec! Ergebnisse der Mathematik und ihrer Grenzgebiete, a Springer series of short monographs on current mathematics, en c!
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it efficient to write the account of the astronomical cuneiform texts, principally ephemerides in the form of arithmetic functions for computing lunar and planetary phenomena, for the third volume. These had originally been identified by J
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So he put aside Greek mathematics en c! went to work seriously on Babylonian astronomy, en c!
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Springer went on to request that, in accordance with the German mathematicians en c! the zustandigen Stellen (cognizant authorities)
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D Richardson, secretary of the American Mathematical Society en c!
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a letter from a former colleague from Gottingen, then in Leipzig and a contributor to Zbt, advising him that, as the director of two international journals, if he values! his relations with German mathematicians, he shouIc!
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Brown into the leacling institution for the stucly of the history of the exact sciences. In his first year he taught Babylonian astronomy.
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in ancient mathematics, came as a special student for two years, and after returning for successive summers became an associate professor en c! the thirc!
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account of Babylonian mathematics in English ever since. Still more extensive were the astronomical cuneiform texts, of which the original stucly was complete by 1945, although it continues!
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years later." Next was Egyptian astronomy. There are two sorts, from oIcler, purely Egyptian sources, such as tomb ceilings en c!
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it amount to? With particular perversity Neugebauer began the ten-page section on Egypt in his later History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy with the provocative sentence, "Egypt has no place in a work on the history of mathematical astronomy." Nevertheless, EAT is a fascinating en c!
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what can be known of Ptolemy's more or less direct antecedents, Apollonius en c! Hipparchus, and a systematic exposition of Babylonian astronomy going beyonc!
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For all its 1200 pages of text en c! nearly 250 pages of figures HAMA is an economical work, its subject is the technical content of ancient mathematical astronomy, en c!
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years prior to any other source for either calenciar. Thus, the Jewish calendar was derived by combining the 19-year cycle using the Alexancirian year with the seven-clay week, en c!
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caTencirical treatise originally written in Arabic by a thirteenth-century Coptic Jacobite. The treatise probably contains more technical information on ecclesiastical caTenciars than any other source, inclucling the curious fact that the sequence of 29- ant!
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. If there is a single, central concern that runs through Neugebauer's work, it is an interest in mathematical science itself, apart from any particular application in any particular civilization, as an expression of sheer ingenuity in abstract thinking, an ingenuity apparent among mathematicians and astronomers whether their language was Akkaclian, Greek, Sanskrit, Arabic, or Latin, en c!
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in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society in 1989, which is on the history of a single astronomical parameter, the mean length of the synoclic month, from cuneiform tablets, to the papyrus fragment just mentioned, to the Jewish calenciar, to an early fifteenth-century book of hours.
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the John F Lewis Prize of the American Philosophical Society in 1952 for "The Babylonian Method for the Computations of the Last Visibilities of Mercury," the Heineman Prize in 1953 for The Exact Sciences, the Pfizer Prize of the History of Science Society in 1975 for MAMA, en c!
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Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Mathematik, Astronomie und Physik B 1:301-80. 1933 Apollonius-Studien (Studier zur Geschichte der Antiken Algebra II)
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London: Lund Humphries for the Institute for Advanced Study. 1957 "Saros" and lunar velocity in Babylonian astronomy.
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Some atypical astronomical cuneiform texts.
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