About:

Renowned mathematical historian Karine Chemla invites you to join her to rethink what you think you know about mathematical symbolism and its history.  Chemla will engage you in debate and encourage you to explore mathematical history and knowledge through a non-European lens.  

The earliest extant Chinese mathematical works handed down through the written tradition attest to specific practices with positions. However, it is not easy for historians to describe this practice, which, until the 10th century, has remained purely material. This talk will show how we can recover key features of the practice and key moments in its history, and it will shed light on the mathematical work that actors carried out in this way. We will see that the use of a decimal place-value notation was merely one facet in this broader practice.

This lecture will be presented by Karine Chemla.
Karine Chemla, School of Mathematics, University of Edinburgh and SPHERE, French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) & University Paris Cité. Her current work focuses, from a historical anthropology viewpoint, on the relationship between mathematics and the various cultures in the context of which it is practiced. Chemla co-edited, with A. Keller and C. Proust, Cultures of computation and quantification in the ancient world (2022), and, with A. Keller, Shaping the Sciences of the Ancient and Medieval World. Textual Criticism, Critical Editions and Translations of Scholarly Texts in History(2024). Chemla was awarded the Otto Neugebauer Prize (European Mathematical Society, 2020) and the Neuenschwander Prize (European Society for the History of Science, 2024). Website: http://www.sphere.univ-paris-diderot.fr/spip.php?article78