David Fowler

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David Herbert Fowler (born April 28, 1937 in Blackburn , † April 13, 2004 in Warwick ) was a British mathematician and mathematician. He was a specialist in ancient Greek mathematics.

He went to school near Morecambe Bay (Rossall School near Fleetwood ) and was an electronics hobbyist as a pupil (he built his own television at the age of 13). From 1955 he studied mathematics at Gonville and Caius College of Cambridge University . His tutor there was Christopher Zeeman and a fellow student John Horton Conway . After graduating with top marks, he spent two years researching analysis at Cambridge and was a lecturer at the University of Manchester from 1961 . In 1967 Zeeman brought him to the newly founded University of Warwick , where he organized the symposia and lectured on analysis. In 1980 he became a Senior Lecturer and in 1990 a Reader . He was diagnosed with a brain tumor in the mid-1990s. In 2000 he retired.

In 1999 he received a D.Sc. from the University of Warwick.

In 1972 he translated the book on catastrophe theory by René Thom with his French wife Denise into English ( structural stability and morphogenesis ).

His preoccupation with the history of mathematics began in 1979 (the occasion was a review of a book by Wilbur Richard Knorr ). He suspected that there was a theory of proportions (and thus irrational quantities and, in a certain sense, real numbers) in Greek mathematics, based on the Euclidean algorithm and suggested in the dialogue Theaitetus by Plato, even before Eudoxus of Knidos . The theory of Eudoxus is presented in the 5th book of the elements by Euclid and, according to Fowler, completely superseded the older theories. Fowler developed his interpretation of Greek mathematics in a series of essays culminating in the book The Mathematics of Plato's Academy (following the earliest evidence of pre-Euclidean mathematics in the Plato school and also analyzing ancient papyri with everyday calculations). His theory, which contradicted the traditional view that the discovery of incommensurability caused a shock to Greek mathematicians that led them to turn to purely geometric theories, was controversial.

Jeremy Gray is one of his PhD students . He also published on Babylonian mathematics with Eleanor Robson . Robson was also a student of Fowler at Warwick who came through him to the history of mathematics.

He was married to Denise Stroh, with whom he had two children. He played the piano and built his own piano.

Fonts

  • Introducing real analysis, London: Transworld Publishers 1973
  • Ratio in early Greek mathematics, Bulletin AMS (New Series), Volume 1, 1979, pp. 807-846, online
  • Book II of Euclid's Elements and a pre-Eudoxan theory of ratio, Archive for the history of Exact Sciences, Volume 22, 1980, pp. 5-36, Part 2 (Sides and Diameters), Volume 26, 1982, pp. 193- 209
  • Anthyphairetic ratio and Eudoxan proportion, Archive for the history of Exact Sciences, Volume 24, 1981, pp. 69-72
  • A generalization of the golden section, Fibonacci Quarterly, Volume 20, 1982, pp. 148-152
  • The Mathematics of Plato's Academy, a new reconstruction, Oxford, Clarendon Press 1987, 2nd edition 1999
  • An invitation to read Book X of Euclid's Elements, Historia Mathematica, Volume 19, 1992, pp. 233-264
  • The story of the discovery of incommensurability, revisited, in K. Gavroglu, J. Christianidis, E. Nicoliaidis (editors): Trends in the Historiography of Science, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, No. 151, Kluwer, 1994, p 221-235
  • Ratio and proportion in early Greek mathematics, in: AC Bowen (editor): Science and Philosophy in Classical Greece, New York, London: Garland, 1992, pp. 98–118
  • Inventive Interpretations, Revue d´Histoire des Mathématiques, Volume 5, 1999 pp. 149–153

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ He refused a biopsy and wrote about it A case for non-intervention , British Medical Journal, Volume 311, December 1995, pp. 1691–1693
  2. ^ Knorr: The Evolution of the euclidean elements, 1975
  3. ^ Fowler, Robson: Babylonian Square Roots: YBC 7289 in context, Historia Mathematica 25 (1998) 366-378
  4. ^ Robson Influence, ignorance or indifference? Rethinking the relationship between babylonian and greek mathematics , pdf ( Memento of the original from December 5, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , British Society for the History of Mathematics, Bulletin 4, Spring 2005  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hps.cam.ac.uk
personal data
SURNAME Fowler, David
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fowler, David Herbert (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British mathematician and mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH April 28, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Blackburn
DATE OF DEATH April 13, 2004
Place of death Warwick