Lis Brack-Bernsen

Lis Brack-Bernsen (born March 2, 1946) is a Danish and Swiss mathematician, historian of science, and historian of mathematics, known for her work on Babylonian astronomy. She is an extraordinary professor of the history of science at the University of Regensburg.

Brack-Bernsen was born in Copenhagen on March 2, 1946. She earned a diploma in mathematics with a minor in physics from the University of Copenhagen in 1970, with Olaf Schmidt as a mentor,and completed her Ph.D. in the history of mathematics in 1974 at the University of Basel, also with studies at Stony Brook University. Her dissertation was Die Basler Mayatafeln; astronomische Deutung der Inschriften auf den Türstürzen 2 und 3 aus Tempel IV in Tikal, and was promoted by J. O. Fleckenstein.

She worked as a lecturer at the University of Copenhagen for 1974–1975, as a researcher at Stony Brook University from 1975 to 1977, and as a researcher in Grenoble and Regensburg from 1977 to 1979. However, at this time she left research to raise a family.

In 1997 she completed her habilitation at Goethe University Frankfurt. She worked as a privatdozentin at Goethe University until 1999, when she moved to the University of Regensburg.

Brack-Bernsen was elected to the Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 2009.

A festschrift, Studies on the Ancient Exact Sciences in Honour of Lis Brack-Bernsen (John Steele and Mathieu Ossendrijver, eds.) was published by Edition Topoi in 2017.