Kim Plofker

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Kim Leslie Plofker (born November 25, 1964 ) is an American mathematician who specializes in the history of Indian mathematics.

Life

Plofker graduated from Haverford College with a bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1985 and then worked as a software engineer and programmer at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and, from 1989, at Brown University , where she also supervised software for the history of mathematics department. She received her PhD in 1985 from Brown University under David Pingree ( Mathematical Approximation by Transformation of Sine Functions in Medieval Sanskrit Astronomical Texts ), where she did research and later was a visiting professor on several occasions. From 1997 to 1999 she was a part-time software engineer at Texterity while continuing to oversee software at Brown University. In the late 1990s she was the technical director of the American Committee for South Asian Manuscripts of the American Oriental Society , where she was also involved in the development of text comparison programs. From 2000 to 2004 she was at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology ( MIT ). From 2004 to 2005 she was visiting professor in Utrecht and at the same time a fellow of the International Institute for Asian Studies in Leiden . In 2006/07, after the death of David Pingree, she arranged his academic legacy and very extensive manuscript collection and supervised his last doctoral students. In 2007 she first became a visiting professor and in 2012 an assistant professor at Union College in Schenectady , where she is currently (2019) an associate professor.

Kim Plofker deals with the history of Indian mathematics, about which she published the book Mathematics in India in 2008 , which has quickly established itself as a standard work. She is particularly interested in the exchange of mathematics and astronomy between India and Islam in the Middle Ages and in general in the exact sciences between Europe and Asia from ancient times to the 20th century. Among other things, she published on the early history of numerical approximation in Sanskrit texts, the different approaches in spherical trigonometry in India and the Islamic world and Leonhard Euler's investigation of Indian calendar calculations. Kim Plofker frequently visits India to study manuscripts.

In 2010 she gave a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Hyderabad ( Indian rules, Yavana rules: foreign identity and the transmission of mathematics ), and in 2011 she was awarded the Brouwer Medal .

Fonts (selection)

Author

Essays
  • An example of the secant method of iterative approximation in a fifteenth century . In: Historia Mathematica. Vol. 23 (1996), ISSN  0315-0860 , pp. 246-256.
  • Euler and Indian Astronomy . In: Robert E. Bradley (Ed.): Leonhard Euler . Life, work and legacy. (Studies in the history and philosophy of mathematics; Vol. 5). Elsevier, Amsterdam 2008, ISBN 978-0-444-52728-8 , pp. 147-166.
  • Mathematics in India . In: Victor J. Katz (Ed.): The mathematics of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India and Islam. A sourcebook . Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 2007, ISBN 978-0-691-11485-9 , pp. 385-514.
  • Mathematics and its worldwide history, Nieuw Archief voor Wiskunde, March 2012, pdf
Monographs

Editor

  • with Charles Burnett, Jan Hogendijk , Michio Yano (Eds.): Studies in the history of Exact Sciences in Honor of David Pingree. (Islamic Philosophy, Theology, and Science; Vol. 54). Brill, Leiden 2004, ISBN 90-04-13202-3 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Named after Bern Dibner (1897–1988).
  2. ↑ David Mumford , Review of the book in the Notices of the AMS : March 2010 , pp. 385-390; accessed on April 12, 2019.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Plofker, Kim
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Plofker, Kim Leslie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mathematician historian
DATE OF BIRTH November 25, 1964