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Otto E. Neugebauer

February 28, 2023

Otto Eduard Neugebauer (May 26, 1899 – February 19, 1990) was an Austrian-American mathematician and historian of science who became known for his research on the history of astronomy and the other exact sciences as they were practiced in antiquity and the Middle Ages. By studying clay tablets, he discovered that the ancient Babylonians knew much more about mathematics and astronomy than had been previously realized. The National Academy of Sciences has called Neugebauer "the most original and productive scholar of the history of the exact sciences, perhaps of the history of science, of our age."

Otto E. Neugebauer
Born(1899-05-26)May 26, 1899
Innsbruck, Austria-Hungary
DiedFebruary 19, 1990(1990-02-19) (aged 90)
Princeton, New Jersey
SpouseGrete Bruck
ChildrenMargo Neugebauer, Gerry Neugebauer
ParentRudolph Neugebauer

Career

Neugebauer was born in Innsbruck, Austria. His father Rudolph Neugebauer was a railroad construction engineer and a collector and scholar of Oriental carpets. His parents died when he was quite young. During World War I, Neugebauer enlisted in the Austrian Army and served as an artillery lieutenant on the Italian front and then in an Italian prisoner-of-war camp alongside fellow countryman Ludwig Wittgenstein. In 1919, he entered the University of Graz in electrical engineering and physics and in 1921 he transferred to the University of Munich. From 1922 to 1924, he studied mathematics at the University of Göttingen under Richard Courant, Edmund Landau, and Emmy Noether. During 1924–1925, he was at the University of Copenhagen, where his interests changed to the history of Egyptian mathematics.

He returned to Göttingen and remained there until 1933. His thesis Die Grundlagen der ägyptischen Bruchrechnung ("The Fundamentals of Egyptian Calculation with Fractions") (Springer, 1926) was a mathematical analysis of the table in the Rhind Papyrus. In 1927, he received his venia legendi for the history of mathematics and served as Privatdozent. In 1927, his first paper on Babylonian mathematics was an account of the origin of the sexagesimal system.

In 1929, Neugebauer founded Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Mathematik, Astronomie und Physik (QS), a Springer series devoted to the history of the mathematical sciences, in which he published extended papers on Egyptian computational techniques in arithmetic and geometry, including the Moscow Papyrus, the most important text for geometry. Neugebauer had worked on the Moscow Papyrus in Leningrad in 1928.

In 1931, he founded the review journal Zentralblatt für Mathematik und ihre Grenzgebiete (Zbl), his most important contribution to modern mathematics.[citation needed] When Adolf Hitler became chancellor in 1933, Neugebauer was asked to sign an oath of loyalty to the new German government, but he refused and was promptly suspended from employment. In 1934, he joined the University of Copenhagen as a full professor of mathematics. In 1936, he published a paper on the method of dating and analyzing texts using diophantine equations. During 1935–1937, he published a corpus of texts named Mathematische Keilschrift-Texte (MKT). MKT was a colossal work, in size, detail, and depth, and its contents showed that Babylonian mathematics far surpassed anything one could imagine from a knowledge of Egyptian and Greek mathematics. He was an Invited Speaker of the ICM in 1928 in Bologna and a Plenary Speaker of the ICM in 1936 in Oslo.[1]

In 1939, after the Zentralblatt was taken over by the Nazis, he moved to the United States, joined the mathematics department at Brown University, and founded Mathematical Reviews. He became an American citizen and remained at Brown for most of his career, founding the History of Mathematics Department there in 1947 and becoming University Professor. Jointly with the American Assyriologist Abraham Sachs, he published Mathematical Cuneiform Texts in 1945, which has remained a standard English-language work on Babylonian mathematics. In 1967, he was awarded the Henry Norris Russell Lectureship by the American Astronomical Society. In 1977, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and in 1979, he received the Award for Distinguished Service to Mathematics from the Mathematical Association of America. In 1984, he moved to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he had been a member since 1950.

Neugebauer was also interested in chronology. He was able to reconstruct the Alexandrian Christian calendar and its origin from the Alexandrian Jewish calendar as of about the 4th century, at least 200 years prior to any other source for either calendar. Thus, the Jewish calendar was derived by combining the 19-year cycle using the Alexandrian year with the seven-day week, and was then slightly modified by the Christians to prevent Easter from ever coinciding with Passover. The ecclesiastical calendar, considered by church historians to be highly scientific and deeply complex, turned out to be quite simple.

In 1988, by studying a scrap of Greek papyrus, Neugebauer discovered the most important single piece of evidence to date for the extensive transmission of Babylonian astronomy to the Greeks and for the continuing use of Babylonian methods for 400 years even after Ptolemy wrote the Almagest. His last paper, "From Assyriology to Renaissance Art", published in 1989, detailed the history of a single astronomical parameter, the mean length of the synodic month, from cuneiform tablets, to the papyrus fragment just mentioned, to the Jewish calendar, to an early 15th-century book of hours.

In 1986, Neugebauer was awarded the Balzan Prize "for his fundamental research into the exact sciences in the ancient world, in particular, on ancient Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Greek astronomy, which has put our understanding of ancient science on a new footing and illuminated its transmission to the classical and medieval worlds. For his outstanding success in promoting interest and further research in the history of science" (Motivation of the Balzan General Prize Committee). Neugebauer donated the prize money of 250,000 Swiss francs to the Institute for Advanced Study.

Neugebauer began his career as a mathematician, then turned to Egyptian and Babylonian mathematics, and then took up the history of mathematical astronomy. In a career which spanned sixty-five years, he largely created modern understanding of mathematical astronomy in Babylon and Egypt, through Greco-Roman antiquity, to India, the Islamic world, and Europe of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The noted physicist and astronomer Gerry Neugebauer at Caltech was his son.

Prizes and honors

In 1936, he gave a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Oslo. This was about pre-Greek mathematics and its position relative to the Greek.

Select publications

Articles

  • ‘The Chronology of the Hammurabi Age’, in Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. lxi (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1941).
  • "The History of Ancient Astronomy Problems and Methods." Journal of Near Eastern Studies 4 (1945): 1–38.
  • "Studies in Ancient Astronomy. VIII. The Water Clock in Babylonian Astronomy." Isis, Vol. 37, No. 1/2, pp. 37–43. (May, 1947). JSTOR link. Reprinted in Neugebauer (1983), pp. 239–245 (*).
  • "The Early History of the Astrolabe." Isis 40 (1949): 240–56.
  • "The Study of Wretched Subjects." Isis 42 (1951): 111.
  • "On the 'Hippopede' of Eudoxus." Scripta Mathematica 19 (1953): 225–29.
  • "Apollonius' Planetary Theory." Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics 8 (1955): 641–48.
  • "The Equivalence of Eccentric and Epicyclic Motion According to Apollonius." Scripta Mathematica 24 (1959): 5–21.
  • "Thabit Ben Qurra 'On the Solar Year' and 'On the Motion of the Eighth Sphere.'" Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 106 (1962): 264–98.
  • (with Richard A. Parker) "Egyptian Astronomical Texts: III. Decans, Planets, Constellations, and Zodiacs." (Brown University Press, 1969)
  • "On the Allegedly Heliocentric Theory of Venus by Heraclides Ponticus." American Journal of Philology 93 (1973): 600–601.
  • "Notes on Autolycus." Centaurus 18 (1973): 66–69.

Books

  • (with Abraham Sachs, eds.). Mathematical Cuneiform Texts. American Oriental Series, vol. 29. New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1945.
  • The Exact Sciences in Antiquity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952; 2nd edition, Brown University Press, 1957; reprint, New York: Dover publications, 1969. ISBN 978-0-486-22332-2
  • Astronomical Cuneiform Texts. 3 volumes. London:1956; 2nd edition, New York: Springer, 1983. (Commonly abbreviated as ACT)
  • The Astronomical Tables of al-Khwarizmi. Historiskfilosofiske Skrifter undgivet af Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, Bind 4, nr. 2. Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard, 1962.
  • Ethiopic Astronomy and Computus. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1979.
  • A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, 3 vols. Berlin: Springer, 1975. (Commonly abbreviated as HAMA.)
  • Astronomy and History: Selected Essays. New York: Springer, 1983.
  • (with Noel Swerdlow) Mathematical Astronomy in Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus. New York: Springer, 1984. ISBN 978-1-4613-8262-1

References

  1. ^ Neugebauer, O. (1937). "Über griechische Mathematik und ihr Verhältnis zur Vorgriechischen". In: Comptes rendus du Congrès international des mathématiciens: Oslo, 1936. Vol. 1. pp. 157–170.

External links

February 28, 2023
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This article includes a list of general references but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations March 2013 Learn how and when to remove this template message Otto Eduard Neugebauer May 26 1899 February 19 1990 was an Austrian American mathematician and historian of science who became known for his research on the history of astronomy and the other exact sciences as they were practiced in antiquity and the Middle Ages By studying clay tablets he discovered that the ancient Babylonians knew much more about mathematics and astronomy than had been previously realized The National Academy of Sciences has called Neugebauer the most original and productive scholar of the history of the exact sciences perhaps of the history of science of our age Otto E NeugebauerBorn 1899 05 26 May 26 1899Innsbruck Austria HungaryDiedFebruary 19 1990 1990 02 19 aged 90 Princeton New JerseySpouseGrete BruckChildrenMargo Neugebauer Gerry NeugebauerParentRudolph Neugebauer Contents 1 Career 2 Prizes and honors 3 Select publications 3 1 Articles 3 2 Books 4 References 5 External linksCareer EditNeugebauer was born in Innsbruck Austria His father Rudolph Neugebauer was a railroad construction engineer and a collector and scholar of Oriental carpets His parents died when he was quite young During World War I Neugebauer enlisted in the Austrian Army and served as an artillery lieutenant on the Italian front and then in an Italian prisoner of war camp alongside fellow countryman Ludwig Wittgenstein In 1919 he entered the University of Graz in electrical engineering and physics and in 1921 he transferred to the University of Munich From 1922 to 1924 he studied mathematics at the University of Gottingen under Richard Courant Edmund Landau and Emmy Noether During 1924 1925 he was at the University of Copenhagen where his interests changed to the history of Egyptian mathematics He returned to Gottingen and remained there until 1933 His thesis Die Grundlagen der agyptischen Bruchrechnung The Fundamentals of Egyptian Calculation with Fractions Springer 1926 was a mathematical analysis of the table in the Rhind Papyrus In 1927 he received his venia legendi for the history of mathematics and served as Privatdozent In 1927 his first paper on Babylonian mathematics was an account of the origin of the sexagesimal system In 1929 Neugebauer founded Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Mathematik Astronomie und Physik QS a Springer series devoted to the history of the mathematical sciences in which he published extended papers on Egyptian computational techniques in arithmetic and geometry including the Moscow Papyrus the most important text for geometry Neugebauer had worked on the Moscow Papyrus in Leningrad in 1928 In 1931 he founded the review journal Zentralblatt fur Mathematik und ihre Grenzgebiete Zbl his most important contribution to modern mathematics citation needed When Adolf Hitler became chancellor in 1933 Neugebauer was asked to sign an oath of loyalty to the new German government but he refused and was promptly suspended from employment In 1934 he joined the University of Copenhagen as a full professor of mathematics In 1936 he published a paper on the method of dating and analyzing texts using diophantine equations During 1935 1937 he published a corpus of texts named Mathematische Keilschrift Texte MKT MKT was a colossal work in size detail and depth and its contents showed that Babylonian mathematics far surpassed anything one could imagine from a knowledge of Egyptian and Greek mathematics He was an Invited Speaker of the ICM in 1928 in Bologna and a Plenary Speaker of the ICM in 1936 in Oslo 1 In 1939 after the Zentralblatt was taken over by the Nazis he moved to the United States joined the mathematics department at Brown University and founded Mathematical Reviews He became an American citizen and remained at Brown for most of his career founding the History of Mathematics Department there in 1947 and becoming University Professor Jointly with the American Assyriologist Abraham Sachs he published Mathematical Cuneiform Texts in 1945 which has remained a standard English language work on Babylonian mathematics In 1967 he was awarded the Henry Norris Russell Lectureship by the American Astronomical Society In 1977 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and in 1979 he received the Award for Distinguished Service to Mathematics from the Mathematical Association of America In 1984 he moved to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton where he had been a member since 1950 Neugebauer was also interested in chronology He was able to reconstruct the Alexandrian Christian calendar and its origin from the Alexandrian Jewish calendar as of about the 4th century at least 200 years prior to any other source for either calendar Thus the Jewish calendar was derived by combining the 19 year cycle using the Alexandrian year with the seven day week and was then slightly modified by the Christians to prevent Easter from ever coinciding with Passover The ecclesiastical calendar considered by church historians to be highly scientific and deeply complex turned out to be quite simple In 1988 by studying a scrap of Greek papyrus Neugebauer discovered the most important single piece of evidence to date for the extensive transmission of Babylonian astronomy to the Greeks and for the continuing use of Babylonian methods for 400 years even after Ptolemy wrote the Almagest His last paper From Assyriology to Renaissance Art published in 1989 detailed the history of a single astronomical parameter the mean length of the synodic month from cuneiform tablets to the papyrus fragment just mentioned to the Jewish calendar to an early 15th century book of hours In 1986 Neugebauer was awarded the Balzan Prize for his fundamental research into the exact sciences in the ancient world in particular on ancient Mesopotamian Egyptian and Greek astronomy which has put our understanding of ancient science on a new footing and illuminated its transmission to the classical and medieval worlds For his outstanding success in promoting interest and further research in the history of science Motivation of the Balzan General Prize Committee Neugebauer donated the prize money of 250 000 Swiss francs to the Institute for Advanced Study Neugebauer began his career as a mathematician then turned to Egyptian and Babylonian mathematics and then took up the history of mathematical astronomy In a career which spanned sixty five years he largely created modern understanding of mathematical astronomy in Babylon and Egypt through Greco Roman antiquity to India the Islamic world and Europe of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance The noted physicist and astronomer Gerry Neugebauer at Caltech was his son Prizes and honors EditJohn F Lewis Prize American Philosophical Society 1952 Heineman Prize for the Exact Sciences 1953 American Council of Learned Societies Award 1961 Henry Norris Russell Lectureship 1967 Austrian Decoration for Science and Art 1973 Pfizer Award 1975 and 1985 History of Science Society Distinguished Service Award Mathematical Association of America 1979 Balzan Prize 1986 for pioneering studies in the field of exact sciences in antiquity especially Mesopotamian Egyptian and Greek astronomy Franklin Medal American Philosophical Society 1987 Susan Culver Rosenberger Medal of Honor Brown University 1987 Honorary doctorates from University of St Andrews 1938 Princeton University 1957 and Brown University 1971 Member of various scientific academies in Vienna Paris Copenhagen and Brussels the British Academy the Irish Academy the National Academy of Sciences the American Philosophical SocietyIn 1936 he gave a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Oslo This was about pre Greek mathematics and its position relative to the Greek Select publications EditArticles Edit The Chronology of the Hammurabi Age in Journal of the American Oriental Society vol lxi New Haven Yale University Press 1941 The History of Ancient Astronomy Problems and Methods Journal of Near Eastern Studies 4 1945 1 38 Studies in Ancient Astronomy VIII The Water Clock in Babylonian Astronomy Isis Vol 37 No 1 2 pp 37 43 May 1947 JSTOR link Reprinted in Neugebauer 1983 pp 239 245 The Early History of the Astrolabe Isis 40 1949 240 56 The Study of Wretched Subjects Isis 42 1951 111 On the Hippopede of Eudoxus Scripta Mathematica 19 1953 225 29 Apollonius Planetary Theory Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics 8 1955 641 48 The Equivalence of Eccentric and Epicyclic Motion According to Apollonius Scripta Mathematica 24 1959 5 21 Thabit Ben Qurra On the Solar Year and On the Motion of the Eighth Sphere Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 106 1962 264 98 with Richard A Parker Egyptian Astronomical Texts III Decans Planets Constellations and Zodiacs Brown University Press 1969 On the Allegedly Heliocentric Theory of Venus by Heraclides Ponticus American Journal of Philology 93 1973 600 601 Notes on Autolycus Centaurus 18 1973 66 69 Books Edit with Abraham Sachs eds Mathematical Cuneiform Texts American Oriental Series vol 29 New Haven American Oriental Society 1945 The Exact Sciences in Antiquity Princeton Princeton University Press 1952 2nd edition Brown University Press 1957 reprint New York Dover publications 1969 ISBN 978 0 486 22332 2 Astronomical Cuneiform Texts 3 volumes London 1956 2nd edition New York Springer 1983 Commonly abbreviated as ACT The Astronomical Tables of al Khwarizmi Historiskfilosofiske Skrifter undgivet af Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab Bind 4 nr 2 Copenhagen Ejnar Munksgaard 1962 Ethiopic Astronomy and Computus Vienna Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 1979 A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy 3 vols Berlin Springer 1975 Commonly abbreviated as HAMA Astronomy and History Selected Essays New York Springer 1983 with Noel Swerdlow Mathematical Astronomy in Copernicus De Revolutionibus New York Springer 1984 ISBN 978 1 4613 8262 1References Edit Neugebauer O 1937 Uber griechische Mathematik und ihr Verhaltnis zur Vorgriechischen In Comptes rendus du Congres international des mathematiciens Oslo 1936 Vol 1 pp 157 170 External links EditOtto E Neugebauer at the Database of Classical Scholars Swerdlow N M 1998 Otto E Neugebauer 1899 1990 PDF United States National Academy of Sciences Otto E Neugebauer Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences Masters of Math From Old Babylon November 26 2010 New York Times article on exhibition honoring Neugebauer Otto Neugebauer Institute for Advanced Study Before Pythagoras The Culture of Old Babylonian Mathematics Institute for the Study of the Ancient World New York University O Connor John J Robertson Edmund F Otto E Neugebauer MacTutor History of Mathematics archive University of St Andrews Otto E Neugebauer at the Mathematics Genealogy Project Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Otto E Neugebauer amp oldid 1124195735, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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