Dr. Kim Plofker
Department of History of Mathematics
Box 1900
Brown University
Providence, RI 02912, USA
Kim_Plofker@Brown.edu
During 2002--2003 (and previously during 1995--2000) Kim Plofker was a Visiting Lecturer in the Department, where she had received her Ph.D. in May 1995 after six years of graduate study with Professor David Pingree (including eight months of research in India on a dissertation fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies). Her research interests in the history of the exact sciences include: cross-cultural transmission in the exact sciences in Europe and Asia from antiquity to the twentieth century; cultural influences in European, Islamic, and Indian civilizations on understanding of quantitative methods and technology for scientific problem-solving; interaction between medieval Indian and Islamic mathematics and astronomy; historical development of calculus; and design and development of electronic tools for working with multilingual, multi-script scientific and scholarly textual sources (printed and manuscript).
In the fall semester of 1996/97, she taught a section of HM 0298 on "Mathematical Cosmology from Ancient to Early Modern Times," and in the spring semester, "Calculus and its History" (HM/MA 0004), in collaboration with Joshua Holden, late of the Department of Mathematics. In Fall 1999 she taught a graduate seminar on Bhaskara's Lilavati, and in Spring 2000 she co-taught with Professor David Pingree a course called History of Indian Mathematics (developed in 1999). In Spring 2002 she supervised a GISP on the cross-cultural history of pre-modern mathematics, and in 2002/2003 she taught "Calculus and its History" as a first-year seminar and a new course, "History of Astrology and History of Science" (HM 0013), in addition to graduate seminars.
She has worked as a Project Consultant (1999--2000) at Brown's Scholarly Technology Group, and recently completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship (2000--2002) at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at MIT. She was also a resident Faculty Fellow (1999--2003) on Brown's Pembroke campus.
She was a Visiting Scholar in the Department in the summer of 2003, and will spend 2003--2004 in Jaipur on a Senior Fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies, cataloguing mathematical and astronomical manuscripts at the Sharma Museum and Research Institute.
This page was last updated 12 September 2003.
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