Jöran Friberg

Monday, May 21, 2001
MS 6229
4:00 p.m.

"On the Babylonian Roots of Classical Greek Mathematics"

Abstract: It is a generally held belief that classical Greek mathematics arose miraculously out of humble beginnings around 500 BC, invented by a handful of pioneering mathematicians, of which perhaps Pythagoras is the most well known. Recent studies have shown that this view of the origin of mathematics is not correct. Instead, classical Greek mathematics was a more or less direct continuation of the work of many anonymous Mesopotamian mathematicians during the preceding two millennia (Late Babylonian, Old Babylonian, Old Akkadian, Sumerian, and even Proto-Sumerian).

This lecture will give a brief and listener-friendly sketch of some popular topics in Mesopotamian mathematics that were taken up and further developed by Greek mathematicians. The lecture begins with a discussion of the incorrectly attributed ^Theorem of Pythagoras^ and its various kinds of known Babylonian predecessors. Other topics mentioned include the Babylonian geometric method of solving quadratic equations, imperfectly copied in Book II of Euclid's Elements, as well as a Babylonian predecessor of Hippocrates' famous squaring of the lune, and various types of Babylonian geometrical constructions related to number theory, perpetuated by Euclid in a book about Division of figures.

Background : Professor Jöran Friberg is one of the world's leading experts on ancient Babylonian Mathematics. Some of his best work includes a survey of sumero--Akkadian mathematics and his contributions to the deciphering of clay tablets of the proto--sumerian and proto--elamite periods. He is the author of Seeds and Reeds Continued (1997), Another Metro-Mathematical Topic Text from Late Babylonian Uruk (1997) and Round and Almost Round Numbers (1997-1998). He will continue his work on "The Mesopotamian Mathematical Tradition, and its Central Place in the Early History of Mathematics" at the Dibner Institute.