John Bukowski

(Travel Fellow, 2018-19)

John Bukowski

Travel Fellow

Mathematics at the Time of the Development of Calculus

John Bukowski is Professor of Mathematics at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. He has undergraduate degrees in mathematics and physics from Carnegie Mellon University and a PhD in applied mathematics from Brown University. In 2012 he was a visiting scholar at Universiteit Leiden, Netherlands, and he often returns to Leiden to work in the archives there. His research interests are in the history of mathematics during the 16th and 17th centuries, a time when many scientists were multidisciplinary, studying mathematics, physics, astronomy, and other related subjects.

Bukowski has long been interested in the work of the 17th century Dutch mathematician-physicist-astronomer Christiaan Huygens, who lived just before and around the time of the development of calculus. He has published and lectured frequently on the mathematical (and musical) works of Huygens. During his visit to the Linda Hall Library, Bukowski plans to explore numerous mathematics books from the 16th and 17th centuries, and he plans specifically to study some of the earliest books written about calculus.