Benno van Dalen

Benno van Dalen (* 1962 ) is a Dutch astronomy and mathematics historian.

Benno van Dalen studied mathematics and computer science at the University of Utrecht with a bachelor's degree in 1983 and history of science with a diploma in 1987 under Jan Hogendijk and Henk Bos (on medieval Islamic astronomical tables), where he also received his doctorate in 1993 (Ancient and Mediaeval Astronomical Tables : mathematical structure and parameter values). As a post-doctoral student he was with David King in London. At the Institute for History of Science in Frankfurt ( Fuat Sezgin ) he dealt with the development of a database of astronomical data in Islamic manuscripts and with mathematical geography in medieval Islam. From 2008 he was at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and from 2013 at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

He deals with medieval Islamic mathematics and astronomy (tables, manuals), including Habasch al-Hasib al-Marwazi , al-Chwarizmi , Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham), al-Battani , Ulugh Beg ( Zij-i-Sultani ) , with the influence of Islamic astronomers among the Mongols and in China in the 13th and 14th centuries (such as an astronomical manuscript (Sandschufini Zij) written for the Mongol lieutenant governor in Tibet in 1366 and Huihui lifa, a Chinese translation of an astronomical handbook with tablets the time around 1383 probably of Persian origin) and general knowledge transfer of Islamic science in the Middle Ages to the surrounding regions. At the Bavarian Academy of Sciences he leads a project with David Juste and Dag Nikolaus Hasse on Claudius Ptolemy (including works ascribed to him) in Latin and Arabic sources (Ptolemaeus Arabus et Latinus). He also revised the catalog of astronomical Islamic handbooks (Zij) by Edward Stewart Kennedy (1956).

He is a corresponding member of the International Academy of the History of Science and was editor of Historia Mathematica in 2004/05 and co-editor from 2007 to 2009 . He was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians (Islamic astronomical handbooks and their transmission to India and China) in Hyderabad 2010.

Fonts

• A Statistical Method for Recovering Unknown Parameters from Medieval Astronomical Tables, Centaurus, Volume 32, 1989, pp. 85-145.
• On Ptolemy's Table for the Equation of Time, Centaurus 37 (1994), pp. 97-153.
• with ES Kennedy, Mustafa K. Saiyid: The Chinese-Uighur Calendar in Tûsî's Zîj-i Îlkhânî, Journal for the History of Arab-Islamic Sciences, Volume 11, 1997, pp. 111–152.
• Islamic Astronomy in China during the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, Historia Scientiarium, Volume 7, 1997, pp. 11-43.
• Islamic and Chinese Astronomy under the Mongols: a Little-Known Case of Transmission, in: Yvonne Dold-Samplonius, Joseph W. Dauben, Menso Folkerts, Benno van Dalen (eds.): From China to Paris: 2000 Years Transmission of Mathematical Ideas , Boethius 46, Stuttgart: Steiner, 2002, pp. 327-356.
• with ES Kennedy, George A. Saliba, Julio Samsó: Al-Battânî's Astrological History of the Prophet and the Early Caliphate, Suhayl 9 (2009–2010), pp. 13–148.

Web links

• CV, Bavarian Academy of Sciences