Jean-Jacques Emmanuel Sédillot

Jean-Jacques Emmanuel Sédillot (born April 26, 1777 in Enghien-Montmorrency , Département Val-d'Oise ; † August 9, 1832 in Paris ) was a French mathematician and astronomical historian who dealt in particular with the mathematics of the Islamic Middle Ages.

Sédillot was a graduate of the École Polytechnique in Paris and then studied oriental languages ​​(especially Arabic) with Antoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacy . His research on the mathematics and astronomy of the Arabs in the Middle Ages influenced the historical accounts of astronomy by Jean-Baptiste Joseph Delambre (L'histoire de l 'astronomie au moyen age) and Pierre-Simon de Laplace (in his Exposition du Système du Monde 1819) .

Sédillot's view of the special originality of Arabic mathematics, however, was not shared by Delambre or Laplace in their presentation; they saw the Arabs only as transmitters of the Greek tradition. So much importance was attached to the work that in 1814 he was given the post of adjoint astronomer at the Bureau des Longitudes , who dealt only with the mathematics and astronomy of the Islamic Middle Ages.

He published mainly in the Compte rendu of the French Academy of Sciences , but much remained unpublished. His son Louis Pierre-Eugène Sédillot continued his work.

literature

• Joseph W. Dauben, Christoph J. Scriba (Ed.): Writing the history of mathematics. ITs historical development . Birkhäuser, Basel 2002, ISBN 3-7643-6167-0 , p. 519f (short biography, as well as in the text p. 16f)