Alexander Jones (science historian)

Alexander Jones (* 1960 ) is a Canadian historian of science . He was particularly concerned with the history of science and mathematics in antiquity.

Alexander Jones studied Classical Philology at the University of British Columbia and the History of Mathematics at Brown University , where he received his doctorate in 1985. He then spent 16 years at the University of Toronto as Professor of Classics and the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology before becoming Professor of Ancient Science History at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University .

He edited various ancient and medieval Greek scientific texts: Book 7 of the Mathematical Collections of Pappos of Alexandria , the Commentary on the Treasure of Analysis , an anonymous Byzantine handbook of astronomy based on Islamic sources, and astronomical and astrological papyri from Oxyrhynchos . He dealt with Claudius Ptolemy , the Antikythera Mechanism and the relationship between Babylonian and Greco-Roman astronomy and astrology.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a member of the American Philosophical Society . He was a Guggenheim Fellow and received the Francis Bacon Award for the History of Science.

Fonts (selection)

• Pappus of Alexandria, Book 7 of the Collection . Edited with translation and commentary. 2 volumes. Springer, New York, Heidelberg, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-540-96257-3 ; ISBN 0-387-96257-3 (dissertation).
• An eleventh-century manual of Arabo-Byzantine astronomy (= Corpus des astronomes byzantins Vol. 3). Gieben, Amsterdam 1987, ISBN 90-5063-014-6 .
• Ptolemy's first commentator (= Transactions of the American Philosophical Society Vol. 80, 7). American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia 1990, ISBN 0-87169-807-2 .
• Astronomical papyri from Oxyrhynchus (P. Oxy. 4133-4300a) (= Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society Vol. 233). 2 volumes. American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia 1999, ISBN 0-87169-233-3 .
• (Ed.): Ptolemy in perspective. Use and criticism of his work from antiquity to the nineteenth century (= Archimedes vol. 23). Springer, Dordrecht, Heidelberg a. a. 2010, ISBN 978-90-481-2787-0 (therein: pp. 11-44: Ancient rejection and adoption of Ptolemy's frame of reference for longitudes ).
• Olaf Pedersen : A survey of the Almagest . With annotation and new commentary by Alexander Jones. Springer, New York, Heidelberg a. a. 2011, ISBN 978-0-387-84825-9 .

Web links

• Homepage at New York University
• Biography on the occasion of an exhibition at New York University
• Alexander Jones at academia.edu