John Emery Murdoch

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John Emery Murdoch , often also John E. Murdoch ( 1927 - September 16, 2010 ), was an American historian of science . He taught as a professor in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University .

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Murdoch received his Ph.D. in 1957. at the University of Wisconsin – Madison majoring in philosophy with a minor in the history of science . In the same year he went to Harvard, then taught for three years at Princeton University and returned to Harvard in 1963. Since then he has taught history of science at the Department of the History of Science with a focus on ancient Greek and late ancient Latin science and philosophy. He was particularly interested in the concepts of infinity , continuity, and limitations in the early sciences .

He is also known for studying the tradition of the elements of Euclid . In the 1960s he discovered a hitherto unknown translation from Greek into Latin, which was made by an unknown translator in Sicily in the 12th century, who also translated Claudius Ptolemy's Almagest .

In 1975 Murdoch was a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for the History of Science and Technology . In 2009 he was awarded the George Sarton Medal for his scientific life's work , the highly prestigious prize for the history of science from the History of Science Society (HSS) founded by George Sarton and Lawrence Joseph Henderson . He was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1973 .

Wilbur Richard Knorr is one of his PhD students .

Publications (selection)

Murdoch published numerous specialist articles on medieval science, mathematics and philosophy. He also translated and commented on various articles on Euclid's elements . His books include:

  • John E. Murdoch, Edith Dudley Sylla (ed.): "The Cultural Context of Medieval Learning. Proceedings of the first International Colloquium on Philosophy, Science, and Theology in the Middle Ages, September 1973." D. Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht and Boston 1975. google books
  • John E. Murdoch: "Subtilitates Anglicanae in Fourteenth-Century Paris: John of Mirecourt and Peter Ceffons." In Machaut's World: Science and Art in the Fourteenth Century, ed. Madeleine P. Cosman and Bruce Chandler, 1978, 51-86.
  • John E. Murdoch, "Album of Science: Antiquity and the Middle Ages". Charles Scribner's Sons, 1984
  • Edward Grant , John Emery Murdoch: Mathematics and its Applications to Science and Natural Philosophy in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honor of Marshall Clagett . 1987
  • Christoph Lüthy, John E. Murdoch, William R. Newman (eds.): Late Medieval and Early Modern Corpuscular Matter Theory . Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2001.
  • Euclid: Transmission of the Elements , Dictionary of Scientific Biography , Volume 4, Scribners 1971, pp. 437-459

literature

  • Edith Sylla, Michael McVaugh (eds.): Texts and contexts in ancient and medieval science. Studies on the occasion of John E. Murdoch's seventieth birthday . Leiden, New York, EJ Brill, 1997. xxxii, 330 p., [5] p. of plates. facsims., port. (Brill's studies in intellectual history, v. 78)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Harvard University, Department of the History of Science People: John E. Murdoch . (Short biography, English)
  2. ^ John Murdoch: Euclides Graeco-Latinus: a hitherto unknown medieval latin translation of the Elements made directly from the Greek , Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Volume 61, 1966, pp. 249-302
  3. ↑ This translation was edited by Hubert LL Busard : The medieval latin translation of Euclid's elements made directly from the Greek, Stuttgart: Steiner 1987
  4. ^ Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation John Emery Murdoch, Fellow 1975
  5. ^ History of Science Society (HSS), 2009 Prize Winners
  6. ^ Sarton Medal - History of Science Society. In: hssonline.org. Retrieved February 12, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Murdoch, John Emery
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Murdoch, John E.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American historian of science
DATE OF BIRTH 1927
DATE OF DEATH September 16, 2010