Christine Proust

Christine Proust (born 1953)[1] is a French historian of mathematics and Assyriologist known for her research on Babylonian mathematics. She is a senior researcher at the SPHERE joint team of CNRS and Paris Diderot University, where she and Agathe Keller (who studies mathematical Sanskrit texts) are co-directors of the SAW project (Mathematical Sciences in the Ancient World) headed by Karine Chemla (an expert in ancient Chinese mathematics).[2][3]

Education and career

Following a two-decade long career as a secondary mathematics teacher, including an agrégation in Mathematics in 1992, Proust studied epistemology and history of science at Paris Diderot University, earning a diplôme d'études approfondies in 1999 and a doctorate in 2004,[3] supervised by Christian Houzel [fr].[4] She completed a habilitation at Paris Diderot in 2010,[3] and became a director of research in the SPHERE laboratory in 2011.[5]

Proust was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton during 2009,[6] a visiting scholar at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University during 2010,[7] and a resident at the Institut Méditerranéen de Recherches Avancées in Marseille during 2010–2011.[8]

Scholarship

In her thesis work, Proust edited and analyzed two long-neglected collections of Old Babylonian mathematical tablets that constitute part of the vast trove of artifacts excavated at Nippur by John Punnett Peters, John Henry Haynes and Hermann Hilprecht in the late 1800s.[9][10] This work resulted in the publication of two books, 'Tablettes mathématiques de Nippur' and 'Tablettes mathématiques de la collection Hilprecht'.[11][12] The first is an edition of the tablets housed at the Museum of the Ancient Orient in Istanbul and an improved reconstruction of the curriculum for elementary scribal education in mathematics at Old Babylonian Nippur, the second is an edition of the tablets housed in the Hilprecht Collection at the University of Jena. (Other Nippur tablets at the University of Pennsylvania and had been previously studied by Eleanor Robson.)

Proust's work produced the most detailed reconstruction of the process of elementary scribal education at Old Babylonian Nippur, including the curriculum and timelines, the interaction of education in Sumerian language and mathematics (Sumerian was a foreign language to the Akkadian speakers of the Old Babylonian era), and the interaction between metrological calculation and abstract calculation using sexagesimal place-value notation.

With Alexander Jones she curated the exhibit Before Pythagoras: The Culture of Old Babylonian Mathematics (2010–2011) at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) in New York in which a number of mathematically important clay tablets, including YBC 7289 and Plimpton 322 were on display.[4] Proust has also been involved in study of the papers and correspondence of the noted historian Otto Neugebauer, who largely initiated the study of mathematical cuneiform texts in the mid-twentieth century. Some of this material was on display at the ISAW exhibit

Books

Proust is the author of Tablettes mathématiques de Nippur (De Boccard, 2007)[10] and of Tablettes mathématiques de la collection Hilprecht (Harrassowitz, 2008).[9]

She is the editor of books including:

  • Scientific Sources and Teaching Contexts Throughout History: Problems and Perspectives (with Alain Bernard, Springer, 2014)
  • A Mathematician's Journeys: Otto Neugebauer and Modern Transformations of Ancient Science (with Alexander Jones and John Steele, Springer, 2016)[13]
  • Scholars and Scholarship in Late Babylonian Uruk (with John Steele, Springer, 2019)[14]

Recognition

Proust was the 2011 winner of the Prix Paul Doistau-Émile Blutet de l'information scientifique [fr], given by the French Academy of Sciences in recognition of the body of her work and, in particular, for her publication of the Nippur tablets.[5] She became a corresponding member of the International Academy of the History of Science in 2019.[15] She received one of the two Kenneth O. May Prize medals awarded by the International Commission on the History of Mathematics on 26 July 2021 at the International Congress for History and Philosophy of Science in Prague.[16]

References

  1. ^ Birth year from idref authority control file, retrieved 2020-09-10
  2. ^ Members, SAW ERC project, retrieved 2019-05-09
  3. ^ a b c "PROUST Christin", Members, SPHERE laboratory, retrieved 2020-09-10
  4. ^ a b "Meet the Curators", Before Pythagoras: The Culture of Old Babylonian Mathematics, New York University, retrieved 2020-09-10
  5. ^ a b Prix Paul Doistau-Emile Blutet
  6. ^ Institute for Advanced Study - Past member - Christine Proust, retrieved 2019-05-09
  7. ^ Christine Proust—Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, retrieved 2019-05-09
  8. ^ Christine Proust, IMéRA - Institute for Advanced Study, retrieved 2019-05-10
  9. ^ a b Review of Tablettes mathématiques de la collection Hilprecht:
  10. ^ a b Review of Tablettes mathématiques de Nippur:
    • Friberg, Jöran (2011), Archiv für Orientforschung, 52: 259–263, JSTOR 24595125{{citation}}: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
    • Brunke, Hagan (January 2013), Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie, 103 (2), Walter de Gruyter {GmbH}: 250–252, doi:10.1515/za-2013-0015{{citation}}: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
  11. ^ Tablettes mathématiques de Nippur. Première partie: Reconstitution du cursus scolaire. Deuxième partie: Édition des tablettes conservées au Musée Archéologique d'Istanbul, avec la collaboration de Veysel Donbaz et d'Asuman Dönmez. Translittération des textes lexicaux et littéraires par Antoine Caivigneaux, Varia Anatolica, vol. XVIII, Istanbul: Institut Français d'Études Anatoliennes Georges - Dumézil, 2007, ISBN 978-2-906053-92-2
  12. ^ Tablettes mathématiques de la collection Hilprecht. Avec la collaboration de Manfred Krebernik et Joachim Oelsner, Texte und Materialien der Hilprecht Collection, vol. 8, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-447-05705-9
  13. ^ Reviews of A Mathematician's Journeys:
  14. ^ Reviews of Scholars and Scholarship in Late Babylonian Uruk:
  15. ^ Christine Proust, International Academy of the History of Science, retrieved 2020-09-12
  16. ^ Barrow-Green, June (2021). "Awarding of the May Prizes for 2021". Historia Mathematica. 56: 1–3. doi:10.1016/j.hm.2021.08.001.