October 17, 2003: Volume 59, Number 6

Prof. Barbanel to talk on ancient Greek mathematics

Julius Barbanel's odyssey into ancient Greece was launched by a colleague in classics who suggested he read some tragedies by Sophocles.

Fascinated, the mathematician delved into others – Homer, Plato, Aristophanes, Euripides and Aeschylus – "all the stuff I could find."

And when it came time for Jen Miller '01, a double major in mathematics and classics, to write a thesis, it was Barbanel as her co-advisor (working along with a member of the classics department) who found himself immersed in ancient Greek mathematics.

Barbanel, professor of mathematics, will deliver a faculty colloquium based on his recent adventures – "The First Great Crisis in the Foundations of Mathematics: Pythagoras, Eudoxus, Plato and the Discovery of Incommensurable Magnitudes" – on Tuesday, Oct. 21, at 11:30 a.m. in Old Chapel. A buffet luncheon in Hale House will follow the talk.

Barbanel, who joined Union in 1979, earned a bachelor's degree from Case Institute of Technology and master's and Ph.D. degrees from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is interested in logic, set theory and fair division.

"Ancient Greek mathematics is not just some other historical period where there was some interesting mathematics being done," Barbanel says. "It was the period of history that really formed, in a very profound way, the way we do mathematics today. It all began there, as so much of western culture did."

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