
I am a historian of science with a focus on institutions, mathematics, and mapmaking in Islamicate societies until 1700 and cross-cultural encounters in the Mediterranean and western Asia since the eighth century. Currently, I am working on a new interpretation of the Book on the Balance of Wisdom by 'Abd al-Rahman al-Khazini (d. 1130s). With an international group of scholars, I am also building an image database on the visualization of the heavens in Eurasia and North Africa until c. 1700 and the material and intellectual cultures of these images.
I studied mathematics at the Technical University Dresden (1969–1973), history of mathematics and science at the Karl Marx University Leipzig (1973–1976), and Near Eastern history and Arabic at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (1978–1982). I wrote my PhD on the history of linear programming and my second dissertation on number theory in Arabic and Persian texts composed between 800 and 1250 (1977; 1989). In 1991, I acquired the venia legendi.
I have published broadly on different topics in the history of mathematics, cartography, patronage, higher education, science and the arts, cross-cultural encounters, and historiography. Recently I edited a book on processes of globalization in the Mediterranean between 700 and 1500 (with Jürgen Renn) and a book about historical narratives on scholarly activities in non-Western societies of the past and their distortions (with Taner Edis and Lutz Richter-Bernburg). My latest published paper deals with early modern sources that reveal how Europeans learned to speak and write Arabic outside the university.
Projects
A Book on al-Khazini’s Book on the Balance of Wisdom
Cross-cultural Knowledge Transfer through Translation
Mediterranean Nautical Cartography: Islands or Gateways of Knowledge?
Visualization and Material Cultures of the Heavens: Image Database Eurasia and North Africa (4000 BCE–1700 CE)
Visualizations of the Heavens and Their Material Cultures in Eurasia and North Africa (4,000 BCE–1700 CE)
Feature Story
Events
Talk
Celestial Bodies, Sovereign Gods: Sūrya, Candra and the Planets in Northern India in the First Millenium CE
MOREMethods Intensive Workshop
Reconstructing Notre Dame: Expertise, Art, Money, Politics.
MOREMethods Intensive Workshop
Three-Dimensional Scanning at the Transept of the Cathedral in Paris: The Benefit for Art History
MOREDiscussion
Inaugural Event: The Future of Medieval Studies in the History of Science
MOREWorkshop
Euclid on the Road. Cross-Cultural Transmission, Translation, and Transformation of the Elements
MOREWorkshop
The Safavid Multi-Text-Manuscript 1984.463 (Harvard University, Sackler Museum)—its Content and Context
MORELecture
- Institute Event
Public Lecture: Narratives, Translations, and a Global History of Science
MOREInstitute's Colloquium
- Institute Event
Institutions of Knowledge in Islamicate Societies: Patronage, Books, Families, the Arts
MORE