Research talks

MediMath Research Talks

Wednesday 12 November 2025, 16:15-17:45 (hybrid form)

Emanuele Rovati (University of Zürich and Abbey Library of Saint Gall): Pseudo-Ptolemy's Centiloquium: The Rise of an Astrological Bestseller

The Centiloquium is the most influential collection of astrological aphorisms in the history of premodern science. Falsely attributed to the Greek astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, the text is first attested in Arabic in 10th-century Egypt and subsequently gained prominence as it was transmitted across languages and cultures. This talk examines the ways in which Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholars addressed some of the text’s problematic features, in particular its complex relationship to Ptolemy’s authentic works. A comparative analysis of their interpretations — marked by striking convergences as well as notable divergences — demonstrates the value of a cross-cultural approach to the history of science in the Mediterranean and beyond.

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

Flyer (PDF, 408KB)

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

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.