David Pingree, 1933–2005

Abstract

David Edwin Pingree (2 January 1933–11 November 2005) employed the fifty years of his scholarly career investigating the development of mathematics, astronomy and the related exact sciences from ancient Mesopotamia to early modern Europe and India. He published editions, translations and studies of source texts in Akkadian cuneiform, Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian, on subjects ranging from infinite series and interpolation techniques to astral magic and iconography in astrological texts. He was professionally affiliated with Harvard University as an undergraduate (B.A. in Classics and Sanskrit, 1954), graduate student (Ph.D. in Sanskrit and Indian Studies, 1960), and Junior Fellow (to 1963); the University of Chicago as a faculty member in the Oriental Institute and Departments of History, South Asian Languages, and Near Eastern Languages (1963–1971); and Brown University as a professor in the Departments of Classics and the History of Mathematics (1971–2005). Over the course of his immensely productive career he received many honors, including a Fulbright Scholarship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and membership in several learned societies, among them the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. Pingree was awarded the title of “Abhinavavarāhamihira” by the government of Uttar Pradesh in 1979, and in 1981 was one of the first recipients of the MacArthur Fellowship (popularly nicknamed the “Genius Grant”), together with co-honorees including the philosopher Richard Rorty, the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, and the computer scientist Stephen Wolfram.