Louis Pierre-Eugène Sédillot

Louis Pierre-Eugène Amélie Sédillot (born June 23, 1808 in Paris ; † December 2, 1875 ibid) was a French historian of mathematics and astronomy who dealt in particular with the mathematics and astronomy of the Islamic Middle Ages. He continued the work of his father Jean-Jacques Emmanuel Sédillot .

Sédillot studied mathematics and oriental languages ​​with his father. He then taught at various schools in Paris (Collège Henri IV, Collège Saint Louis).

He continued the work of his father and tried like him to prove the independence and special originality of Arabic mathematics and astronomy, which was controversial at the time. There was a protracted dispute before the Académie des Sciences. He was supported by Michel Chasles (when the conflict revived in 1862), on the other side were Jean-Baptiste Biot and his successor Joseph Bertrand . Among other things published on the solution of equations of the third degree by Ibn al-Haytham (which was later confirmed by Franz Woepcke ). His main argument for the originality of the Arabs, however, was his claim (1836) that Abu l-Wafa had discovered the variation of the moon's motion long before Tycho Brahe . That was wrong, as Bernard Carra de Vaux finally found in 1892, and ultimately had the consequence that the recognition of Islamic contributions to mathematics was severely delayed. On the other hand, his opponents in the Académie des Sciences (like Biot) were by no means qualified to judge him in this area.

Sédillot's actual program, the defense of Arabic mathematics, faded into the background, but was continued and successfully promoted in Paris by Franz Woepcke, who was in Paris from 1850.

Fonts

• Matériaux pour servir à l'histoire comparée des sciences mathématiques chez les Grécs et les Orientaux, Paris, 2 volumes, 1845, 1849
• Prolégomènes des tables astronomiques d'Oloug Beg, Paris 1846, 1853
• Manuel de la Bourse, contenant des notions exactes sur les effets publics français et étrangers, avec l'état de leur cours respectif depuis l'origine; sur les affaires qui se traitent à la Bourse de Paris, 1829
• Traité des instruments astronomiques des Arabes composé au treizième siècle par Aboul Hhassan Ali, de Maroc, intitulé Collection des commencements et des fins, traduit de l'arabe sur le manuscrit 1147 de la Bibliothèque royale par J.-J. Sédillot, et publié par L.-Am. Sédillot, 2 volumes, 1834-1835
• Manuel classique de chronologie, 2 volumes, 1834–1850
• Mémoire sur les instruments astronomiques des Arabes, 1841
• Mémoire sur les systèmes géographiques des Grecs et des Arabes, 1842
• Supplément au Traité des instruments astronomiques des Arabes, 1844
• Histoire des Arabes, 1854, 1877, Reprint 1984
• Les Professeurs de mathématiques et de physique générale au Collège de France, 1869. Reprint: Ann Arbor: UMI, 1992

literature

• Dauben, Scriba (Ed.), Writing the history of mathematics, Birkhäuser, 2002, p. 520 (short biography, as well as p. In text 16f)

References and comments

1. ↑ His son was a sinologist and Biot studied the exact sciences in China and India in his old age. Biot had long been concerned with the history of science, for example Isaac Newton .