David Fowler (mathematician)

David Herbert Fowler ( born April 28, 1937 in Blackburn, † April 13, 2004 in Warwick ) was a British historian of mathematics and mathematicians. He was a specialist in ancient Greek mathematics.

He went close to Morecambe Bay ( Rossall School in Fleetwood ) to school and was a student electronics hobbyists ( age 13 he built it's own TV ). From 1955, he studied mathematics at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. His tutor was there Christopher Zeeman and a fellow student John Horton Conway. After graduating with honors, he conducted research for two years in Analysis, Cambridge, and was from 1961 Lecturer at the University of Manchester. 1967 brought him Zeeman to the newly founded University of Warwick, where he organized symposia and lectured on Analysis. In 1980 he became Senior Lecturer in 1990 and Reader. Mid-1990s, a brain tumor he was diagnosed with. 2000, he went into retirement.

In 1999 he was awarded a D.Sc. the University of Warwick.

In 1972 he translated the Book of the catastrophe theory of René Thom with his French wife Denise into English (Structural stability and morphogenesis ).

His interest in mathematics history began in 1979 ( The occasion was a review of a book by Wilbur Richard Knorr ). He suspected that it was ( in a sense of real numbers and thus irrational and sizes ) in Greek mathematics existed before Eudoxus of Cnidus, a theory of proportions, based on the Euclidean algorithm and indicated in the Theaetetus of Plato. The theory of Eudoxus is shown in the fifth book of the Elements of Euclid and displaced according to Fowler, the older theories completely. Fowler developed his interpretation of Greek mathematics in a series of papers culminating in the book The Mathematics of Plato 's Academy (where he pursued voreuklidischer mathematics in the school of Plato the earliest references and also ancient papyri with everyday bills analyzed ). His theory, which contradicted the traditional view that the discovery of incommensurability would have resulted in the Greek mathematician a shock that brought them to turn to purely geometrical theories was controversial.

His doctoral Jeremy Gray belongs. He also published with Eleanor Robson on Babylonian mathematics. Robson was also a student of Fowler in Warwick, who came to mathematics story about him.

He was married to Denise straw, with whom he had two children. He played the piano and built his own piano.

Writings

  • Introducing real analysis, London: Transworld Publishers 1973
  • Ratio in early Greek mathematics, AMS Bulletin (New Series), Volume 1, 1979, pp. 807-846, online
  • Book II of Euclid 's Elements and a pre - Eudoxan theory of ratio, Archive for the history of Exact Sciences, Volume 22, 1980, pp. 5-36, Part 2 ( Sides and Diameters ), Volume 26, 1982, p 193 - 209
  • Anthyphairetic ratio and proportion Eudoxan, Archive for the history of Exact Sciences, Volume 24, 1981, p 69-72
  • A generalization of the golden section, Fibonacci Quarterly, Volume 20, 1982, p 148-152
  • The Mathematics of Plato 's Academy, a new reconstruction, Oxford, Clarendon Press 1987, 2nd edition 1999
  • An invitation to read Book X of Euclid 's Elements, Historia Mathematica, Volume 19, 1992, p 233-264
  • The story of the discovery of incommensurability, revisited, in K. Gavroglu, J. Christianidis, E. Nicoliaidis (Editor): Trends in the Historiography of Science, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, No. 151, Kluwer, 1994, S. 221-235
  • Ratio and proportion in early Greek mathematics, in: AC Bowen (Editor ): Science and Philosophy in Classical Greece, New York, London: Garland, 1992, pp. 98-118
  • Inventive Interpretations, Revue d' Histoire des Mathématiques, Volume 5, 1999 p 149-153
Wilbur Knorr Theaetetus (dialogue)
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