Lecture: George Sarton (1884-1956) and Chinese Mathematics

Title：George Sarton (1884-1956) and Chinese Mathematics

Lecturer：Prof. Xu Yibao（徐义保，Borough of Manhattan Community College of the City University of New York）

Summary：In his monumental work, Introduction to the History of Sciences (3 vols. 1927-1948), George Sarton provides an account not only of Western sciences, but also that of Islam, India, and China. Among Chinese sciences from ancient times down to the Renaissance, Chinese Mathematics was Sarton’s major focus. Comparing the proofread version of the Introduction to History of Science, preserved in the Harvard University Archives, with its published one, and drawing valuable information from Sarton’s correspondence kept both at the Houghton Library of Harvard University and at the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature of the New York Public Library, this talk tries to assess the reconstruction of how his account of Chinese mathematics was made.

About the lecturer：Xu Yibao is a professor of mathematics at Borough of Manhattan Community College of the City University of New York (CUNY). He wrote his dissertation, Concepts of Infinite in Chinese Mathematics, under the supervision of Professor Joseph W. Dauben at the Graduate School and University Center of CUNY. Among his publications are “Bertrand Russell and the Introduction of Mathematical Logic in China” (History and Philosophy of Logic, 2003), “The First Chinese Translation of the Last Nine Books of Euclid’s Elements and Its Source” (Historia Mathematica, 2005), and “Dialectics of Numbers: Marxism, Maoism, and the Calculus of Infinitesimals” in Mr. Science and Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, in press, will appear in September, 2012). Working with Professor Dauben and Professor Guo Shuchun of the Institute for the History of Natural Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, he has recently produced a new English translation of the Jiuzhang Suanshu (Nine Chapters on the Arts of Mathematics), which is going to be published by Liaoning Education Press in the series of Library of Chinese Classics by the end of 2012. His primary research interests are history of Chinese mathematics and mathematical exchanges between China and the United States.

Time：14:00 - 16:30, July 10, 2012, Tuesday

Location：Room 209, Institute for the History of Natural Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 55 Zhong Guan Cun East Road, Haidian, Beijing 100190, P. R. China

Contact：Han Yi

Tel：010-57552537 13718198992

Email： hanyi@ihns.ac.cn