Conference programme

Reopening the History of Mathematical Symbolism Through Remarks on its Historiography

Speaker: Karine Chemla (School of Mathematics, The University of Edinburgh and SPHERE)

Commentator: Xiaohan Célestin Zhou

John Wallis on Symbolization and the Nature of Viète’s "New Algebra"

Speaker: Toni Malet (Institut d'Història de la Ciència, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)

Commentator: Agathe Keller

After Viète. Symbols and Symbolic Representation in the Mathematical Writings of John Wallis (1616-1703)

Speaker: Philip Beeley (Faculty of History, University of Oxford)

Commentator: Prashant Kumar

Isaac Barrow blowing Archimedes out of proportion: A close look at his commentary for Sphere and Cylinder Book 2 Proposition 4

Speaker: E. Hunter

Commentator: Jens Høyrup 

The revised Nesselmann categories applied to European algebraic writings between 1300 and 1650

Speaker: Jens Høyrup (Roskilde University, emeritus)

Commentator: Christophe Eckes

How Historians and Orientalists have Debated the Existence of Symbolism in Sanskrit Mathematical Texts. A First Overview centered on the Figure of Léon Rodet

Speaker: Agathe Keller (SPHERE, CNRS—University Paris Cité)

Commentator: Philip Beeley 

The Historiography of Mathematical Symbols in Salih Zeki's Kāmūs-i Riyādiyyāt

Speaker: Zehra Bilgin (PhD, Istanbul Medeniyet University, Institute for the History of Science, İstanbul, TÜRKİYE)

Commentator: E. Hunter

Revisiting Salih Zeki's Thesis about the Origins and History of Arabic Algebraic Notation

Speakers: Alex Garnick (Harvard University and SPHERE) and Karine Chemla (School of Mathematics, The University of Edinburgh and SPHERE)

Commentator: Richard Oosterhoff

The Chakravala's New Clothes: De Morgan on Symbolism, Analogy, and Epistemology in Bhāskara's Solutions to Indeterminate Equations

Speaker: S. Prashant Kumar (University of Chicago)

Commentator: Marie-José Durand-Richard

Mathematical symbolism and its history in the Mathematical and Philosophical Dictionary of Charles Hutton (1795/1815)

Speaker: Agathe Keller (SPHERE, CNRS—University Paris Cité)

Commentator: Arilès Remaki

Historiography of Mathematical Notations by Cambridge’s Algebraists (1820-1845)

Speaker: Marie-José Durand-Richard (Honorary Lecturer Université Paris 8 Vincennes & Researcher associated to SPHERE, CNRS, CNRS—University Paris Cité)

Commentator: Isobel Falconer 

“A very fortunate idea”: Humboldt and Degérando on place-value notation, pasigraphies, and Condillac’s legacy

Speaker: Ivahn Smadja (Nantes Université, CAPHI - Institut Universitaire de France)

Commentator: Toni Malet

Bourbaki's historiography on algebraic notations and symbolism

Speaker: Christophe Eckes (Archives Henri-Poincaré, université de Lorraine)

Commentator: J.P. Ascher

Uncontrolled symbolic computations in the history of the differential calculus and in non-Western mathematics: A first exploration of late 19th-century views

Speaker: David Waszek (post-doctoral fellow, Ecole Normale Supérieure)

Commentator: Ksenia Tatarchenko

Exponentiation: a notational issue?

Speaker: Arilès Remaki (Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz) 

Commentator: Karine Chemla

Differences in the Understanding of Mathematical Symbolism Between Mathematicians and Historians of Mathematics in 19th and 20th century China

Speaker: Zhou Xiaohan (Institute for the History of Natural Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing)

Commentator: Zehra Bilgin

Reddening Signs: What is Marxist about the Russian Language Historiography of Mathematical Symbolism?

Speaker: Ksenia Tatarchenko (JHU, Medicine, Science, and the Humanities program)

Commentator: Ivahn Smadja