Kim Plofker facts for kids

Kim Leslie Plofker was born on November 25, 1964. She is an American historian who studies the history of Indian mathematics. This means she looks at how math developed in India over time.

Kim Plofker's Education and Work

Kim Plofker was born in Chennai, India. She earned her first degree in mathematics from Haverford College. In 1995, she received her Ph.D. from Brown University. Her studies focused on how math was used in old Indian astronomy.

In the late 1990s, she worked for the American Committee for South Asian Manuscripts. This group is part of the American Oriental Society. She helped create computer programs to compare old texts. From 2000 to 2004, she worked at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology. This institute is located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Later, in 2004 and 2005, she was a visiting professor in Utrecht. At the same time, she was a Fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies. Today, she is a professor at Union College in Schenectady.

What Kim Plofker Studies

Kim Plofker focuses on the history of mathematics in India. She wrote a book about it in 2009 called Mathematics in India. She is very interested in how math and astronomy ideas were shared. This includes how India and Islamic countries exchanged knowledge long ago. She also studies how science moved between Europe and Asia. This covers a long period, from ancient times up to the 1900s.

She also wrote another book with Clemency Montelle. It is called Sanskrit Astronomical Tables and came out in 2019.

Awards and Honors

In 2010, Kim Plofker gave an important speech. It was at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Hyderabad. She spoke about how mathematical ideas traveled between different cultures. In 2011, she received the Brouwer Medal. This is a special award from the Royal Dutch Mathematical Society.