Research talks
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, 16:15-17:45 (hybrid form)
Julia Tomasson (Columbia University), Polygons and Polyphony: Geometry after the so-called Islamic Golden Age
Recent trends in post-classical (~14th-18th centuries CE) Islamic intellectual history have sought to reclaim this period as intellectually dynamic, with a set of epistemic priorities that were coherent, albeit different from our own. In this talk, I examine a set of post-classical geometric manuscripts to demonstrate that these were not “mere commentaries” nor merely Greek mathematics in Arabic. Rather, these texts show that in the postclassical period, there was a distinct shift away from Greek epistemologies and discursive traditions to new Islamic ones into which they wrote their achievements.
Room: F -105 Lerchenweg 36, 3012, Bern
If you wish to attend the meeting online, please write an email to medimath.momug@unibe.ch