Conferences

MediMath Research Talks

Spring Semester 2025

Wednesday 5 March 2025, 16:00-18:00 (hybrid form)

Zehra Bilgin (Istanbul Medeniyet University/Institute of the History of Science), Risāla dar ʻIlm-i Hisāb: Alī Qūshjī’s First Work on Mathematics

Alī Qūshjī (d. 879/1474), an astronomer, mathematician, theologian and linguist of fifteenth century, has a key role in the formation of scientific life in the Ottomans. Risāla dar ʻIlm-i Hisāb, which is the first of two mathematical works by Alī Qūshjī, was written in Persian, probably in Samarkand before h.861/1456. It consists of three chapters; on Indian arithmetic, sexagesimal arithmetic (arithmetic of astronomers) and applied geometry. In this talk, I will discuss the writing process of the book and Alī Qūshjī’s motivations on writing it. Besides, as an example of the content, I will give the method of finding the quadratic root of integers.

Room: F -105 Lerchenweg 36, 3012, Bern
If you wish to attend the meeting online, please write an email to medimath.momug@unibe.ch

Wednesday 14 May 2025, 16:00-18:00 (hybrid form)

Julia Tomasson (Columbia University), Shams al-dīn al-Samarqandī's Ashkāl al-Ta'sīs: Context, Text, Commentary

Shams al-dīn al-Samarqandī's (1250-1310) Ashkāl al-Ta'sīs is an Arabic supercommentary on Euclid's Elements of Geometry. This was the main textual tradition through which Euclidean mathematics was taught and known throughout the postclassical Islamicate world, but has received relatively scant scholarly attention, at least in part because this tradition departs from the Greek Elements. What is distinctive about this tradition and what can it tell us about the history of post-classical Islamicate mathematics more broadly?

Room: F -105 Lerchenweg 36, 3012, Bern

If you wish to attend the meeting online, please write an email to medimath.momug@unibe.ch

Thursday 5 June 2025, 10:00-16:00 (hybrid form)

Cross-cultural trajectories in early modern mathematics

Joint conference between MediMath and the Chair of History and Philosophy of Mathematical Sciences (ETH-Zürich). Organizers: E. Sammarchi and R. Wagner.

Programme

9:30-10:00 Coffee and welcome

10:00-11:00 Alex Garnick (Harvard University)

11:00-12:00 Eleonora Sammarchi (University of Bern) Who are “The Arabs” in Renaissance arithmetical texts?

12:00-13:15 Lunch

13:15-14:15 Damian Moosbrugger (ETH-Zürich) The mathematics of German-speaking artisans around 1600

14:15-14:30 Break

14:30-15:30 Roy Wagner (ETH-Zürich) Potential transmission of knowledge from Kerala to Europe around cubic equations and sine calculation

15:30-16:30 Arilès Remaki (JGU Mainz) Disposition and Interpretation: the Bouvet-Leibniz hypothesis on the Chinese table of the Yi-Jing