Cultures of Computation and Quantification in the Ancient World Numbers, Measurements, and Operations in Documents from Mesopotamia, China and South Asia

“The volume is a success. … The editors are to be commended for having attracted a wide range of authors in terms of national and gender diversity, also not always present in this field. Cultures of Computation and Quantification in the Ancient World will be of considerable use to specialists not only in the three geographical areas of focus, but also to historians, philosophers, and sociologists of premodern mathematics in all regions and traditions.” (Stephen Chrisomalis, Historia Mathematica, August 18, 2025) 

Karine Chemla
studied mathematics at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Jeunes Filles (1976-1982) and the history of mathematics at the Institute for the History of Natural Sciences (Beijing, China, 1981). She is a Senior Researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), in the laboratory SPHERE (CNRS & Université de Paris), and from 2011 to 2016, Chemla was Principal Investigator of the ERC Advanced Research Grant “Mathematical Sciences in the Ancient Worlds,” with co-directors A. Keller and C. Proust (SAW).





Agathe Keller
is Senior Researcher with the CNRS and Member of the SPHERE lab in Paris. She works on medieval Sanskrit mathematical commentaries (5
^th
-12
^th
centuries) and on the historiography of mathematics in and on India from the 19
^th
century until today. She has published
Expounding the mathematical Seed, Bhāskara’s commentary on the mathematical chapter of the Āryabha
ṭīya
(Birkhaüser, 2006). 




Christine Proust
is Senior Researcher Emerita at the French
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
(Paris). She works on the history of mathematics in the Ancient Near East, more specifically on mathematical cuneiform texts from different periods, including the end of the third millennium BCE, the Old Babylonian period (early second millennium), and Late Babylonian periods (last centuries of the first millennium BCE).