Otto E. Neugebauer

Otto E. Neugebauer
Born	(1899-05-26)May 26, 1899 Innsbruck,Austria-Hungary
Died	February 19, 1990(1990-02-19)(aged 90) Princeton, New Jersey
Spouse	Grete Bruck
Children	Margo Neugebauer,Gerry Neugebauer
Parent	Rudolph Neugebauer

Otto Eduard Neugebauer(May 26, 1899 – February 19, 1990) was an Austrian-Americanmathematicianandhistorian of sciencewho became known for his research on thehistory of astronomyand the otherexact sciencesas they were practiced inantiquityand theMiddle Ages.By studyingclay tablets,he discovered that the ancientBabyloniansknew much more aboutmathematicsandastronomythan had been previously realized. TheNational Academy of Scienceshas called Neugebauer "the most original and productive scholar of the history of the exact sciences, perhaps of thehistory of science,of our age. "

Career

Neugebauer was born inInnsbruck,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. DuringWorld 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 countrymanLudwig Wittgenstein.In 1919, he entered theUniversity of Grazinelectrical engineeringandphysicsand in 1921 he transferred to theUniversity of Munich.From 1922 to 1924, he studied mathematics at theUniversity of GöttingenunderRichard Courant,Edmund Landau,andEmmy Noether.During 1924–1925, he was at theUniversity of Copenhagen,where his interests changed to the history of Egyptian mathematics.

He returned to Göttingen and remained there until 1933. His thesisDie Grundlagen der ägyptischen Bruchrechnung( "The Fundamentals of Egyptian Calculation with Fractions" ) (Springer, 1926) was a mathematical analysis of the table in theRhind Papyrus.In 1927, he received hisvenia legendifor the history of mathematics and served asPrivatdozent.In 1927, his first paper on Babylonian mathematics was an account of the origin of thesexagesimalsystem.

In 1929, Neugebauer foundedQuellen 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 theMoscow Papyrus,the most important text for geometry. Neugebauer had worked on the Moscow Papyrus inLeningradin 1928.

In 1931, he founded the review journalZentralblatt für Mathematik und ihre Grenzgebiete(Zbl), his most important contribution to modern mathematics.WhenAdolf Hitlerbecame 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 theUniversity of Copenhagenas a full professor of mathematics. In 1936, he published a paper on the method of dating and analyzing texts usingdiophantine equations.During 1935–1937, he published a corpus of texts namedMathematische 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 andGreek mathematics.He was an Invited Speaker of theICMin 1928 in Bologna and a Plenary Speaker of the ICM in 1936 in Oslo.

In 1939, after theZentralblattwas taken over by theNazis,he moved to the United States, joined the mathematics department atBrown University,and foundedMathematical 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 AssyriologistAbraham Sachs,he publishedMathematical Cuneiform Textsin 1945, which has remained a standard English-language work on Babylonian mathematics. In 1967, he was awarded theHenry Norris Russell Lectureshipby theAmerican Astronomical Society.In 1977, he was elected to theNational Academy of Sciences,and in 1979, he received the Award for Distinguished Service to Mathematics from theMathematical Association of America.In 1984, he moved to theInstitute for Advanced StudyinPrinceton,where he had been a member since 1950.

Neugebauer was also interested inchronology.He was able to reconstruct theAlexandrian Christian calendarand 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 preventEasterfrom ever coinciding withPassover.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 Greekpapyrus,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 afterPtolemywrote theAlmagest.His last paper, "From Assyriology to Renaissance Art", published in 1989, detailed the history of a single astronomical parameter, the mean length of thesynodicmonth, fromcuneiformtablets, to the papyrus fragment just mentioned, to the Jewish calendar, to an early 15th-centurybook of hours.

In 1986, Neugebauer was awarded theBalzan Prize"for his fundamental research into the exact sciences in the ancient world, in particular, on ancient Mesopotamian, Egyptian andGreek astronomy,which has put our understanding ofancient scienceon 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 toEgyptianandBabylonian mathematics,and then took up the history of mathematical astronomy. In a career which spanned sixty-five years, he largely created modern understanding of mathematicalastronomy in BabylonandEgypt,throughGreco-Romanantiquity,to India,theIslamic world,andEurope of the Middle Agesand theRenaissance.The noted physicist and astronomerGerry NeugebaueratCaltechwas his son.

Prizes and honors

• John F. Lewis Prize (American Philosophical Society,1952)
• Heineman Prizefor 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 fromUniversity of St Andrews(1938),Princeton University(1957) andBrown 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 Society

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

Select publications

Articles

• 'The Chronology of the Hammurabi Age', inJournal 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 Studies4 (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."Isis40 (1949): 240–56.
• "The Study of Wretched Subjects."Isis42 (1951): 111.
• "On the 'Hippopede' of Eudoxus."Scripta Mathematica19 (1953): 225–29.
• "Apollonius' Planetary Theory."Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics8 (1955): 641–48.
• "The Equivalence of Eccentric and Epicyclic Motion According to Apollonius."Scripta Mathematica24 (1959): 5–21.
• "Thabit Ben Qurra 'On the Solar Year' and 'On the Motion of the Eighth Sphere.'"Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society106 (1962): 264–98.
• (withRichard 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 Philology93 (1973): 600–601.
• "Notes on Autolycus."Centaurus18 (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.ISBN978-0-486-22332-2
• Astronomical Cuneiform Texts.3 volumes. London:1956; 2nd edition, New York: Springer, 1983. (Commonly abbreviated asACT)
• The Astronomical Tables of al-Khwarizmi.Historiskfilosofiske Skrifter udgivet 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 asHAMA.)
• Astronomy and History: Selected Essays.New York: Springer, 1983.
• (withNoel Swerdlow)Mathematical Astronomy in Copernicus' De Revolutionibus.New York: Springer, 1984.ISBN978-1-4613-8262-1

External links

• Otto E. Neugebauerat 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 Memoirsof theNational 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. Neugebauerat theMathematics Genealogy Project