Lobsang Yongdan

Lobsang Yongdan received his PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge in 2014. Combining the methodologies of the history of science, historical anthropology, and connected histories, he is researching the intellectual history of Tibet and in particular Euro-Tibetan intellectual encounters. His work examines how Tibetan Buddhist  lamas at the imperial Qing courts (1642–1911) translated and transmitted European science into the Tibetan language, and the impact of this transmission on Tibetan intellectual traditions. Yongdan's dissertation focused on a classical Tibetan scholar named Jampel Tendzin Trinlé (1789–1839), also known as Tsenpo Nomohan, who studied European geographical science and introduced it to Tibet through the writing of a world geographical text in Tibetan known as the ’Dzam gling rgyas bshad (“The Detailed Description of the World”). Recent publications include a study of several eighteenth century Jesuits’ mathematical texts translated into Tibetan, published in the journal Inner Asia. At the MPIWG, his research will focus on the introduction of the Pythagorean theorem by a lama of the Qing court known as Akya Lobzang Tenpé Gyaltsen (1708-1768) and its impacts on the history of Tibetan mathematics.