Quick Facts
LeoBiography
Jeanne Peiffer (born 20 August 1948 in Mersch) is a Luxembourgian historian of mathematics.
Contributions
She deals with scientific journals in the 17th and 18th centuries, also from a scientific sociological point of view and with the aspect of the history of the specialization of mathematics journals, with perspective in the Renaissance in connection with geometry and optics, and the letter as a communication tool of mathematics in the 18th century.
She was co-editor (with Pierre Costabel) of the correspondence of Johann Bernoulli (Birkhäuser 1988, 1992) and published a French translation of the geometry of Albrecht Dürer. With Amy Dahan, she wrote a popular French-language textbook of mathematics, translated into English and German.
From 1995 to 2015 she was co-editor of the Revue d'histoire des mathématiques and co-editor of Historia Mathematica.
Education and career
Peiffer studied at the University of Luxembourg where she is a professor after being a student of René Taton. She is Emeritus Research Director at the CNRS and the Center Alexandre Koyré of the CNRS and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS).
Publications
- with Amy Dahan-Dalmédico:Une histoire des mathématiques, Routes et Dédales, éditions Études vivantes Québec, 1982, Éditions du Seuil, Paris, ISBN 2020091380, 1986, 4th edition 2001
- German translation: Wege und Irrwege – eine Geschichte der Mathematik, Birkhäuser 1994, Springer 2014
- Herausgeberin und Übersetzerin: Albrecht Dürer, Géométrie, Ed. du Seuil 1995 (also translated into Spanish)
- Faire des mathématiques par lettres, Revue d'histoire des mathématiques IV/1, 1998, pp. 143–157
- with Jean-Pierre Vittu: Les journaux savants, formes de la communication et agents de la construction des savoirs (xviie – xviiie siècles), Dix-huitième siècle, volume 40, 2008, pp. 281–300.
- Constructing perspective in sixteenth-century Nuremberg, in: Mario Carpo, Frédérique Lemerle (publisher), Perspective, Projections & Design. Technologies of Architectural Representation, London & New York : Routledge, 2007, pp. 65–76