On the 125th anniversary of his birth: My “encounters” with Otto Neugebauer

Abstract

Otto Neugebauer was arguably the most influential historian of mathematics in the 20th century. His main merit was the interpretation of the mathematical content in Old Babylonian texts (around 2000–1600 BCE) and in Neo-Babylonian astronomical texts (around 600–0 BCE) which have come down to us as cuneiform clay tablets. The lecture focused on Neugebauer’s other activities for mathematics, highlighting their astonishing breadth and effectiveness. These include his role as “architect” of the new building for the Mathematical Institute in Göttingen in the 1920s, his work as a founder and director of two leading mathematical abstracting journals in the 1930s and 1940s, his experiences as a non-Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, and his appearance as a keen and often sarcastic observer of political events. The paper has some overlap with my article (2016) but adds new literature and a discussion of the transition of Neugebauer’s research interests to mathematical astronomy, as revealed in his talk at the ICM in Oslo 1936. In the final section, some work on Babylonian astronomy is mentioned which continues and draws on Neugebauer’s research.