CAS Visiting Professor Karine Chemla Visits IHNS

As a recipient of the CAS Professorships for Senior International Scientists, Professor Karine Chemla visited the Institute for the History of Natural Science from August 1 to October 31, 2010. During her visit, she mainly conducted research of the history of ancient Chinese mathematical texts and history of French science, in collaboration with colleagues of the institute. Based on her study, she delivered three lectures: “A retrospect of researches of history of science in the 20th century France and a prospect of future trends,” (October 8) “Michel Chasles: a geometrician and a historian of mathematics in the first half of the 19th century,” (October 15) and “Some features of the ancient Chinese algorithm text.” (October 22) In the meantime, she also organized and/or attended conferences in Xi’an, Shanghai, Changsha and Shijiazhuang.

A leading scholar of history and philosophy of science in the world, Karine Chemla is professor of SPHERE (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique – Université Paris 7, Laboratoire de Philosophie et Histoire des Sciences). Her research mainly focuses on the history of ancient Chinese mathematics, and she is interested in comparing it with ancient Indian, Babylonian and Greek counterparts. She has made many innovative achievements and published prolifically. She is editor or director of many international journals and projects in history of science.

For her outstanding achievements in history of science, Professor Chemla was awarded the “Binoux, Henri de Parville, Jean-Jacques Berger, Remlinger” Prize (French Academy of Sciences) in 2006. Because of the translation of Nine Chapters to French, she and Professor Guo Shuchun were awarded Le prix Ikuo Hirayama (Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, Institut de France) in 2006. She was also bestowed the Silver Medal of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in 2008.