Kim Plofker: Information about courses taught

• Calculus and its History ( HM/MA 0004, Semester I 02/03, Semester II 96/97): This course was developed by me and a graduate student in Mathematics, and crosslisted in the History of Math and Math departments. Currently offered as a first-year seminar, it's intended primarily for nonscientists who need a basic grounding (or just have a personal interest) in the techniques of calculus, but would also like to investigate questions like the following: What is calculus? Who invented it? When and how did it develop? Why is it harder than the math I know already? (In what ways is it easier??) What problems inspired its creation? In what ways did its historical setting change its development, and how did its development affect history in general? How did it change the way mathematicians and other people think about mathematical knowledge? Readings of original sources in English translation range from Babylonian mathematical tablets through Euclid and Archimedes, Oresme, Galileo, Leibniz and Newton, to Cauchy, Riemann and Robinson.
• History of Astrology and History of Science ( HM 0013, Semester II 02/03): A new course offered for the first time in Spring 2003. Astrology has continually and significantly influenced the philosophy, literature, science, and daily life of the major civilizations of Asia and Europe for the past two thousand years and more. Yet its history is almost universally neglected in the academic study of these civilizations. Astrology is now so widely condemned among educated people as an intellectually degraded and pernicious pursuit that the serious exploration of the development and impact of its ideas is seldom or never attempted. HM 0013 seeks to restore this censored knowledge to our common understanding of the past.
• Ancient Scientific Texts: Sanskrit (HM 0231, Semester I 02/03, Semester I 99/00, Semester I 95/96; HM 0232, Semester II 95/96): Intermediate and advanced graduate readings courses in the history and study of Sanskrit scientific texts. In some sections we studied a published version of the famous arithmetical work of Bhaskara, the Lilavati; and in another (a two-semester sequence), the student and I read printed and manuscript versions of the Tithicintamani of Ganesa, producing a revised edition, English translation, and mathematical commentary (now published in SCIAMVS.) In Fall 2002 we will read Bhaskara's astronomical handbook, the Karanakutuhala.
• History of Indian Mathematics (HM/MA 0137, Semester II 99/00, Semester II 98/99): Professor David Pingree and I developed and taught this course together as an introduction for undergraduate students (graduate students in the Department may also take this course for credit if they read the sources in the original language) to the contributions made to the history of mathematics over the past few millennia in India. The course starts with the development of verbal and written number systems, and proceeds to trace the expansion of some of the most significant mathematical concepts through South Asia's cultural and intellectual history up to the middle of the second millennium of our era.
• Mathematical Cosmology from Ancient to Modern Times (HM 0298, Semester I 96/97): A readings course (tutorial) exploring the ways in which human notions of the structure of the universe changed (over a period stretching from the ancient Babylonians through Ptolemy, Tusi, and Copernicus, to Kepler and Newton) by being viewed mathematically. Readings consist primarily of excerpts from original sources in English translation.
• Ancient Scientific Texts: Sanskrit (HM 0232, Semester II 94/95): As a teaching assistant, I taught a graduate readings course focusing on Bhaskara's major astronomical work, the Siddhantasiromani.
• The History of Mathematics (HI 83, Semester I 91/92): As a TA, I assisted the professor in developing and teaching a survey course on the history of mathematical thought from antiquity to the twentieth century. The development of number systems, the emergence of algebra and geometry, the mathematization of natural philosophy, non-Euclidean geometries, and the problems of historiography in history of mathematics were some of the major themes of the course.
• Other teaching activities
  • (Points on the Compass First-year Orientation Seminar: 9/99): With Dr. Peter Scharf in the Classics Department, I gave a seminar on "Retention and Loss of Knowledge in Media Transitions: Manuscripts, Print, Encoded Text," discussing the ways in which technological changes in preserving verbal compositions alter not only the content but perhaps also the nature of accessible knowledge from the past.
  • (Brown Learning Community, 8/92, 3/93, 8/93): As an instructor in the Brown Summer Science Adventure and Brown Society of Junior Scientists programs, I developed learning activities materials for junior high and high school students, and used them in teaching classes on the history of astronomy and mathematics and its traces in everyday life.

This page was last updated 16 August 2002.