The Department encourages prospective applicants to contact Dr. Pingree or Dr. Plofker to discuss their plans for graduate study. Contact the Graduate School directly to request an application form or for general information about graduate study at Brown. The Department regrets to announce that as of 2003, it is temporarily unable to accept any new applications for admission to the graduate program.
Note to students interested in general history of mathematics: Brown's program focuses on the history of the exact sciences (mathematics, astronomy and other quantitative disciplines such as astrology and divination in the ancient world) from the ancient Near East up through Renaissance Europe, concentrating specifically on the study of scientific texts in the original languages and on the transmission of scientific ideas between cultures. This means that our graduates must become familiar with (besides French and German for secondary sources) at least two of the classical languages whose scientific traditions we cover, namely, Akkadian, Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Arabic, and Persian. (It's not necessary to know all of them before entering, of course! although the more you come in with, the better.) We don't train graduate students in the general history and philosophy of mathematics or in the history of more modern exact sciences (i.e., nothing European after 1700), although we do some undergraduate teaching in those areas.
There are a number of other institutions in which graduate students may study and do research on the history of mathematics; unfortunately, since the subject tends to be at most a minor specialty at such institutions, they are difficult to identify. All the official information we have about such programs is listed below. (Graduate programs accepting applicants for graduate training in the history of mathematics are urged to inform us so that we may link to them here.)
This page was last updated August 2003.
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