Dr. Benno van Dalen
Research Leader
General Information
Benno van Dalen is a Dutch historian of science with a special interest in the history of astronomy, the developments in the compilation of astronomical handbooks with tables in the Islamic world, and the transmission of mathematical and astronomical knowledge between the Islamic world on the one hand and China, India and Europe on the other. He was editor of the journal Historia Mathematica from 2003 to 2009, co-organizer (with Sonja Brentjes and François Charette) of the conference Certainty, Doubt, Error: The production of knowledge and its impediments in the practice of pre- and early modern science (Frankfurt, November 2001), and organizer of the conference Between Orient and Occident: Transformation of Knowledge (Munich, November 2009). For more information, see also his website at http://www.bennovandalen.de/.
Short Curriculum Vitae
PhD Utrecht (1993), MSc Utrecht (1987), BSc Utrecht (1983)
- 2008-2010 Research associate (initiative of excellence) at the Chair for History of Science, Ludwig Maximilian University (Munich).
- 2000-2007 Researcher in two DFG funded projects at the Institute for the History of Science of Goethe University Frankfurt.
- 1994-1999 Postdoctoral scholarships in Frankfurt am Main (Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung), Kyoto (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science), and at the Dibner Institute (MIT, Cambridge MA).
- 1987-1993 Research and teaching position funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) at the Mathematical Institute of the University of Utrecht.
Selected Publications
- ‘Commentary on the Horoscope of Iskandar Sultan: An Introduction to Islamic Mathematical Astrology’, Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften 23 (2022), pp. 1–104.
- Ptolemaic Tradition and Islamic Innovation: the Astronomical Tables of Kūshyār ibn Labbān. Turnhout: Brepols, 2021. [Ptolemaeus Arabus et Latinus — Texts 2]
- Editing and Analysing Numerical Tables. Towards a Digital Information System for the History of Astral Sciences (editor, with Matthieu Husson and Clemency Montelle), Turnhout: Brepols, 2021. [Ptolemaeus Arabus et Latinus — Studies 2]
- Islamic Astronomical Tables. Mathematical Analysis and Historical Investigation. Farnham UK (Ashgate/Variorum) 2013. ISBN 978-1-4724-2238-5. See this link on the Routledge website.
- From China to Paris: 2000 Years Transmission of Mathematical Ideas (editor, with Yvonne Dold-Samplonius, Joseph W. Dauben and Menso Folkerts), Stuttgart: Steiner, 2002. [Boethius 46]
- Ancient and Mediaeval Astronomical Tables: mathematical structure and parameter values. Utrecht (Utrecht University) 1993. ISBN 90-393-0167-0.