It was in 1979 that Abraham Seidenberg published the second of his groundbreaking articles evaluating the role of the Śulba Sūtras in the history of mathematics and the dismissive treatment accorded to them by mainstream history. Since then, no systematic attempt has been made to trace how the consensus has been shaped regarding the role of the Śulba Sūtras after they were first introduced to the Western world in 1875 by Georg Thibaut. This talk addresses this shortcoming by examining the writings of the key figures of the day, such as Moritz Cantor and Otto Neugebauer, whose works have been influential in relegating the Śulba Sūtras to a little more than a footnote in the history of mathematics.
Bhaskar Kamble is an author, theoretical physicist, and data scientist. He obtained his Ph.D. in theoretical condensed matter physics in 2010 from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India. After that, he worked as a researcher for several years at the Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, the University of Kaiserslautern, Germany, and at the Asia Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics in Pohang, South Korea, specializing in the fields of unconventional superconductivity, quantum phase transitions, and many-particle physics. Currently, he works as a data scientist in Berlin in energy analytics. He has a deep interest in the history of mathematics in the Hindu civilization and philosophy. He is the author of the best-selling book The Imperishable Seed: How Hindu Mathematics Changed the World and Why This History Was Erased (2022).
