Olaf Henrik Schmidt

Olaf Henrik Schmidt (born December 12, 1913 in Sommersted near Hadersleben , Denmark ; † June 7, 1996 in Copenhagen ) was a Danish historian of mathematics and astronomy.

Schmidt completed his studies in mathematics with Otto Neugebauer at the University of Copenhagen in 1938 and then followed this to Brown University in the USA, where he received his doctorate in 1943 ( On the Relation Between Ancient Mathematics and Spherical Astronomy. ). Due to the outbreak of war, he stayed in the USA until 1945. From 1953 he got a job as a mathematical historian at the University of Copenhagen, which was converted in 1965 into a professorship for the history of the exact sciences.

He was very reluctant to publish because he was constantly improving his manuscripts, and as a mathematician historian he was close to Hieronymus Zeuthen . He was primarily interested in the uncovering of mathematical ideas in the works of mathematicians and studied them in the context of the state of the art of their time and not in retrospect using methods developed later. He dealt with Babylonian mathematics and astronomy, Indian mathematics and astronomy and Archimedes , among others .

He was a corresponding member of the International Academy for the History of Science .

Fonts

• The computation of the length of daylight in Hindu astronomy, Isis, Volume 35, 1944, pp. 205-211
• Rain stokken; Implementation of the Rietz system and the Darmstadt system, Copenhagen 1950
• On the computation of ahargana, Centaurus, Volume 2, 1952, pp. 140-180
• with Viggo Petersen: The determination of the longitude of the apogee of the orbit of the Sun according to Hipparchus and Ptolemy, Centaurus, Volume 12, 1968, pp. 73-96
• A mean value principle in Babylonian planetary theory, Centaurus, Volume 14, 1969, pp. 267-286
• A system of axioms for the Archimedean theory of equilibrium and center of gravity, Centaurus, Volume 16, 1975, pp. 1-35
• On Plimpton 322: Pythagorean numbers in Babylonian mathematics, Centaurus, Volume 24, 1980, pp. 4-13
• with Lis Brack-Bernsen: Bisectable trapezia in Babylonian mathematics, Centaurus, Volume 33, 1990, pp. 1-38
• with Lis Brack-Bernsen: On the foundations of the Babylonian column  : astronomical significance of partial sums of the lunar four, Centaurus, Volume 37, 1994, pp. 183-209 ${\displaystyle \phi }$

literature

• Kirsti Andersen , Olaf Henrik Schmidt, Joseph W. Dauben, Christoph Scriba (eds.), Writing the history of mathematics, Birkhäuser 2002, p. 518 (biography)
• Lis Brack-Bernsen: In memoriam Olaf Schmidt, Historia Mathematica, Volume 24, 1997, pp. 131-134

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Olaf Henrik Schmidt in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)