Dr. Ilana Wartenberg

Role: Researcher

Scope of Research:

Astronomical and mathematical treatises in Hebrew from the Italian Renaissance; The presence and meaning of the vernacular and Latin in these treatises; Hebrew science in the Middle Ages in Sepharad, the East, Northern France and Ashkenaz; Hebrew as a language of science; Medieval Jewish intellectual history

Academic Background:

B.Sc. in pure mathematics (Tel-Aviv University)

M.Sc. in applied mathematics, magna cum laude (Tel-Aviv University)

M.A. in general linguistics (Tel-Aviv University)

Ph.D. in history and philosophy of science, summa cum laude (Paris Diderot University, joint doctorate with Tel-Aviv University)

Selected Publications

Books:

The Epistle of the Number by Ibn al-Aḥdab; the transmission of Arabic mathematics to Hebrew circles in medieval Sicily, in the series ‘Perspectives on Society and Culture’, (Gorgias Press, 2015).
ISBN 978-1463204174

Articles:

‘A non-linear transmission of Euclid’s Elements in a medieval Hebrew calendrical treatise’, in Centaurus, Vol. 62 (2020), pp. 158-180.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1600-0498.12277

‘La trasmissione italiana dello Yesod ‘Olam (1309/10 e.v.) di Isaac Ha-Israeli’, in Materia giudaica XXIII (2018), Ed. Mauro Perani, Florence: Giuntina, pp. 331-348.

‘The Persian Zoroastrian Calendar in a Medieval Hebrew Treatise on The Jewish Calendar by Abraham bar Ḥiyya’, in Tarikh-e Elm (History of Science), 10 (1), University of Tehran (2013), pp. 31-53.

‘The discovery of a fragment of Isaac ha-Israeli's Yesod Olam in the Cairo Genizah’, in Zutot: Perspective on Jewish Culture 9 (2012), pp. 51-58.

‘The Epistle of the Number: An Episode of Algebra in Hebrew’, in Zutot: Perspective on Jewish Culture 5 (2008), pp. 95-101.

‘Iggeret ha-Mispar by Isaac ben Solomon Ibn al-Aḥdab (Sicily, 14th century) (Part I: The Author)’, in Judaica 64 (2008), Issue 1, pp. 18-36.

‘Iggeret ha-Mispar by Isaac ben Solomon Ibn al-Aḥdab (Sicily, 14th century) (Part II: The Text)’, in Judaica 64 (2008), Issue 2, pp. 149-161.

Chapters in Books:

‘Linguistic innovations in the mathematical Hebrew in treatises on the Jewish calendar in the Middle Ages’ in Studies in Language, Eds. Elitzur Bar-Asher Siegal, Doron Yaakov, Hebrew and Aramaic in the Middle Ages – Language Studies and Grammatical Thought, (Hebrew Language Academy. 2020), pp. 153-162 (in Hebrew).

‘Mudejar decorations within calendrical, geographical, and mathematical tables and diagrams in a fifteenth-century Sephardic manuscript of Isaac Israeli’s Yesod Olam from the British Library (Add. 15977)’, in Sephardic Book Art of the fifteenth-century, Eds. Luís Urbano Afonso, Tiago Moita (Brepols, 2019), pp. 157-174.

(With Wagner, R., Aradi, N., Baraness, A., Garber, D., Segev, S., & Simonson, S.) in ‘Mathematics in Hebrew’ in Sourcebook in the Mathematics of Medieval Europe and North Africa, Eds. V. J. Katz, M. Folkerts, B. Hughes, R. Wagner, J. L. Berggren, pp. 224-380, (Princeton University Press, 2016).

‘The Naissance of the Medieval Hebrew Mathematical Language as Manifest in Ibn al-Aḥdab’s Iggeret ha-Mispar’, in A Universal Art: Hebrew grammar across disciplines and faiths, Eds. Nadia Vidro, Irene Zwiep, Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, pp. 117-131, (Brill, 2014).

‘The Hebrew calendrical bookshelf of the early 12th century: the cases of Abraham Bar Ḥiyya and Jacob Bar Samson’, in Time, Astronomy, and Calendars in the Jewish Tradition, Eds. C. Burnett and S. Stern, pp. 97-111 (Leiden: Brill, 2013).

‘The Epistle of the Number: The Diffusion of Arabic Mathematics in Medieval Europe’, in Circolazione Dei Saperi Nel Mediterraneo: Filosofia E Scienze (Secoli IX-XVII), Circulation des Savoirs Autour de la Méditerranée: Philosophie Et Sciences (IXe-XVIIe Siècle): Atti Del VII Colloquio Internazionale Della Société Internationale d'Histoire des Sciences Et de la Philosophie Arabes Et Islamiques: Firenze, 16-28 Febbraio 2006, Eds. Graziella Federici-Vescovini and Ahmad Hasnaoui, pp. 101-110 (Edizioni Cadmo, 2013).