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Glen Van Brummelen

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Glen Van Brummelen
Photo of Van Brummelen holding a t-shirt.

Glen Robert Van Brummelen (born May 20, 1965) is a Canadian historian of mathematics specializing in the history of trigonometry and historical applications of mathematics to astronomy.

He is president of the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics,[1] and was a co-editor of Mathematics and the Historian's Craft: The Kenneth O. May Lectures (Springer, 2005).

Life

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Van Brummelen earned his PhD degree from Simon Fraser University in 1993,[2] and served as a professor of mathematics at Bennington College from 1999 to 2006. He then transferred to Quest University Canada as a founding faculty member. In 2020, he became the dean of the Faculty of Natural and Applied Sciences at Trinity Western University in Langley, BC.[3]

Glen Van Brummelen has published the first major history in English of the origins and early development of trigonometry, The Mathematics of the Heavens and the Earth: The Early History of Trigonometry.[4] His second book, Heavenly Mathematics: The Forgotten Art of Spherical Trigonometry, concerns spherical trigonometry.[5][6]

In 2016 he received a Deborah and Franklin Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics.[7]

Works

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  • The Mathematics of the Heavens and the Earth: The Early History of Trigonometry Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2009. ISBN 9780691129730, OCLC 750691811
  • Heavenly Mathematics: The Forgotten Art of Spherical Trigonometry Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013. ISBN 9780691175997, OCLC 988234342
  • Trigonometry: A Very Short Introduction; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2020 ISBN 9780198814313, OCLC 1101269106
  • The Doctrine of Triangles: The History of Modern Trigonometry Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2021 ISBN 978-0691179414, OCLC 1201300540

References

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  1. ^ CSHPM Council Archived 2013-12-27 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved 2013-12-26.
  2. ^ Glen Van Brummelen at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  3. ^ "Trinity Western University Welcomes New Dean of the Faculty of Natural and Applied Sciences". Trinity Western University. 29 May 2020. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
  4. ^ McRae, Alan S. (2009), Review of The Mathematics of the Heavens and the Earth, MR2473955.
  5. ^ Steele, John M. (July 2013), "A forgotten discipline (review of Heavenly Mathematics)", Metascience, doi:10.1007/s11016-013-9836-9, S2CID 254793113
  6. ^ Funk, Martin (2013), Review of Heavenly Mathematics, MR3012466.
  7. ^ "Recipients of the Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics; Mathematical Association of America". www.maa.org.
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