Professor Karine Chemla

Karine Chemla is a Senior Researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), in the laboratory SPHERE (CNRS & University de Paris ). Her research fields include the history of mathematics in ancient and medieval China within the context of a world history of mathematics. She also carries out research on mathematics in 18th and 19th century Europe. More generally, Chemla focuses on the relationships between mathematics and the scholarly cultures in the context of which they are produced, a topic she approaches from a historical anthropology viewpoint.

She has published a number of books, including (with Guo Shuchun) Les neuf chapitres, Le classique mathématique de la Chine ancienne et ses commentaires (Dunod, 2004), a critical edition and French translation of the mathematical book that was perceived for centuries in China as the most important of all mathematical Canons; she has edited others, including recently (with Evelyn Fox-Keller), Cultures Without Culturalism: The Making of Scientific Knowledge (Duke University Press, 2017).

She is a Fellow of the American Philosophical Society, and in 2020 won the Otto Neugebauer Prize of the European Mathematical Society.