Sabetai Unguru

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Sabetai Unguru (born January 1, 1931 in Podu Iloaiei , Romania ) is an Israeli science and mathematics historian.

Unguru studied philosophy, classical philology, history and mathematics at the University of Alexandru Ioan Cuza Iași . In 1961 he emigrated to Israel. In 1966 he went to the USA, where he received his doctorate in 1970 from the University of Wisconsin in Madison (Wisconsin) . He was then an assistant professor and then an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma until 1982 . In 1983 he became Associate Professor at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University , which had recently been founded. He has been a professor there since 1987 and director of the institute since 1991.

He worked u. a. about Apollonius von Perga , whose Conica (conic section theory) he edited with his student Michael Fried. Another area of ​​work is medieval optics (including the issue of Witelo's perspective from the 13th century). In 1989 and 1996 he published a math story (in Hebrew). In 1975 he sparked controversy with his work "On the need to rewrite the history of Greek mathematics" (Archive for the History of Exact Sciences, Vol. 15, 1975/76, pp. 67-114). He argued against interpretations of Euclid in particular from a modern point of view, such as Paul Tannery and Hieronymus Zeuthen , who wanted to see remnants of a geometric algebra in parts of the elements, which was also represented by Bartel Leendert van der Waerden in his book "Awakening Science". Van der Waerden, Hans Freudenthal and André Weil opposed Unguru's theses in this debate.

literature

  • Martina Schneider: Contextualizing Unguru´s 1975 attack on the historiography of ancient greek mathematics , in: Volker Remmert, Martina Schneider, Henrik Kragh Sörensen (eds.), Historiography of Mathematics in the 19th and 20th centuries, Birkhäuser 2016 p. 245

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Van der Waerden Defense of a “shocking” point of view , Archive for the History of Exact Sciences, Vol. 15, 1975, pp. 199–210, Freudenthal What is algebra and what has been its history? , ibid, Vol. 16, 1976/77, pp. 189-200, André Weil Who betrayed Euclid? , ibid., Vol. 19, 1978, pp. 91-93. Unguru replied in History of ancient mathematics- some reflections on the state of the art , Isis, Vol. 20, 1979, pp. 555-565.
personal data
SURNAME Unguru, Sabetai
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli mathematician historian
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Podu Iloaiei , Romania