Professor Agathe Keller

Professor Agathe Keller is based at CNRS / Université Paris Cité, where she works on the mathematical practices testified by Sanskrit treatises and commentaries dating from the 5th-14th centuries. She is currently working on a critical edition of Caturveda Pṛthūdakṣvamin (fl. 860 )’s commentary on the mathematical chapter of the Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta.

She also explores 19- and 20th-century histories of mathematics in India written outside and within the Indian subcontinent, underlying notably their political context. She is also interested in the way critical editions and translations of mathematical texts were elaborated and then circulated and read and the influence this has had on present day historiographies.

From 2011-2016 She was a c-Director of the European Research Council-funded project “Mathematical Sciences in the Ancient World (SAW)”, which aimed to develop new theoretical approaches to the history of ancient mathematics, in order to highlight a variety of practices in the fields that today too often are presented as homogeneous whole, that is, “Mesopotamian  mathematics”, “Chinese mathematics”, and “Indian mathematics”. Together with Karine Chemla and Christine Proust, she edits the series “Why The Sciences of the Ancient World Matter” published by Springer