Gerald J. Toomer

Gerald James Toomer (born November 23, 1934 in Aldershot , Hampshire ) is a British historian of mathematics and science.

Toomer attended Clifton College in Bristol from 1945 to 1953 and studied classical philology at Oxford University , where he was a Fellow of Corpus Christi College after graduating from 1955 to 1959 and EP Warren Praelector from 1961 to 1965 . Since 1965 he was a professor at Brown University , which Otto Neugebauer made a center for the history of science of antiquity and the ancient Orient, where he is now professor emeritus.

He was particularly concerned with ancient Greek mathematics and astronomy, published a new annotated translation of the Almagest by Claudius Ptolemy and a translation of Books 5 to 7 of Apollonius ' doctrine of conics , which are only known from Arabic ( Banu Musa ), and from Diocles Treatise on burning mirrors ( De speculis causticis ). He also edited the Theorica Planetarum by Campanus von Novara (1971) with Frances Benjamin . He wrote u. a. the biographies of Apollonius, Hipparchus and Ptolemy in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography and on the influence of Babylonian astronomy on Hipparchus.

Toomer wrote a history of the history of the study of Arabic in England in the 17th century and a biography of the English universal scholar John Selden .

He has been a member of the International Academy for the History of Science since 1984 . He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1985.

Fonts

• Diocles: On burning mirrors. The arabic translation of the lost greek original. Ed., With engl. transl. and commentary by GJ Toomer. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York 1976 (Sources in the history of mathematics and physical sciences, 1). ISBN 3-540-07478-3 .
• Apollonius: Conics, books V to VII. The Arabic translation of the lost Greek original in the version of the Banū Mūsā. In two volumes. Ed. with transl. and commentary by GJ Toomer. Springer, New York, Berlin, Heidelberg, Springer (Sources in the history of mathematics and physical sciences, 9). ISBN 3-540-97216-1 .
• Lost Greek mathematical works in arabic translation. In: Mathematical Intelligencer, Vol. 6, 1984, pp. 32-38.
• as editor: Ptolemy's Almagest. Translated and Annoted. Duckworth, London 1984; also Princeton University, Princeton 1998, ISBN 0-691-00260-6 (English translation).
• Hipparchus and Babylonian Astronomy. In: Erle Leichty, Maria de J. Ellis, Pamel Gerardi (eds.): A Scientific Humanist: Studies in Memory of Abraham Sachs. Philadelphia: Occasional Publications of the Samuel Noah Kramer Fund, 9, 1988.
• Eastern Wisdom and Learning. The study of Arabic in 17th century England. Oxford University Press 1996.
• John Selden. A life in scholarship. Oxford University Press, 2009.