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obituary [2011/12/01 11:33]
kantel
obituary [2011/12/07 16:47] (aktuell)
kantel
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 In 1974 Peter Damerow became a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, where he worked on the development of a mathematics curriculum. In designing instruction materials he always remained committed to overcoming social barriers, including those to the propagation of mathematical and scientific knowledge. This emphasis soon directed him toward questions about the historical development of the mathematical sciences. At the Max Planck Institute for Human Development Peter Damerow worked first under Peter M. Röder, and later in the “Development and Socialization” research area headed by Wolfgang Edelstein, where he supervised the “Culture and Cognition” project. He was a representative in the Humanities Section of the Max Planck Society and even a member of the MPG Senate for a time. In 1974 Peter Damerow became a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, where he worked on the development of a mathematics curriculum. In designing instruction materials he always remained committed to overcoming social barriers, including those to the propagation of mathematical and scientific knowledge. This emphasis soon directed him toward questions about the historical development of the mathematical sciences. At the Max Planck Institute for Human Development Peter Damerow worked first under Peter M. Röder, and later in the “Development and Socialization” research area headed by Wolfgang Edelstein, where he supervised the “Culture and Cognition” project. He was a representative in the Humanities Section of the Max Planck Society and even a member of the MPG Senate for a time.
  
-For many years Peter Damerow and Wolfgang Lefèvre co-directed the //Begriffsentwicklung in den Naturwissenschaften// (“Concept Development in the Natural Sciences”) research colloquium, a program held jointly by the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and the Freie Universität Berlin. This colloquium became, not least through Wolfgang Edelstein’s initiative, one of the nuclei of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science founded in 1994, the proponent of a context-related, theoretically oriented historiography of science. Two of its later directors, Jürgen Renn and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, belonged to the colloquium, as did a number of the institute’s staff (among them Jörg Kantel, Hartmut Kern, Ursula Klein, Wolfgang Lefèvre, Peter McLaughlin, Staffan Müller-Wille, Jochen Schneider and Urs Schoepflin). The book co-authored by Peter Damerow and Wolfgang Lefèvre, //Rechenstein, Experiment, Sprache. Historische Fallstudien zur Entstehung der exakten Wissenschaften//, published in 1981, blazed the trail for some of the later research projects of the institute.+For many years Peter Damerow and Wolfgang Lefèvre co-directed the //Begriffsentwicklung in den Naturwissenschaften// (“Concept Development in the Natural Sciences”) research colloquium, a program held jointly by the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and the Freie Universität Berlin. This colloquium became, not least through Wolfgang Edelstein’s initiative, one of the nuclei of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science founded in 1994, the proponent of a context-related, theoretically oriented historiography of science. Two of its later directors, Jürgen Renn and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, belonged to the colloquium, as did a number of the institute’s staff (among them Jochen Büttner, Jörg Kantel, Hartmut Kern, Ursula Klein, Wolfgang Lefèvre, Peter McLaughlin, Staffan Müller-Wille, Jochen Schneider and Urs Schoepflin). The book co-authored by Peter Damerow and Wolfgang Lefèvre, //Rechenstein, Experiment, Sprache. Historische Fallstudien zur Entstehung der exakten Wissenschaften//, published in 1981, blazed the trail for some of the later research projects of the institute.
  
 In his article for the book Peter Damerow was concerned particularly with the emergence of counting techniques in early high cultures. This soon became a central emphasis of his work, one which made him known all over the world: the emergence of writing and counting in Mesopotamia. Starting in 1982 Peter Damerow worked closely with the archeologist Hans Nissen and the philologist Robert K. Englund on archaic texts and proto-cuneiform script. Peter Damerow was one of the pioneers of what are called today the “digital humanities.” When he met Robert K. Englund in 1982, who had just begun as a research assistant to Hans Nissen at the time, he noticed a pile of punch cards in his office, which he brought right away to the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. His colleagues from the Near Eastern Archeology department had lost their technical support and could find no way to make any use of the data stored on these punch cards. Peter Damerow, in contrast, had the mathematician’s confidence that there must be a way to solve such a problem. He had access to the computing center of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and the necessary programming skills in LISP to process and evaluate the data. This was the beginning of the electronic Uruk project. Even back then Peter Damerow was deploying computer-aided methods of analysis to decode the domain-specific counting systems of early Babylonian mathematics, yielding a resounding success. This work led to his co-founding, along with Robert K. Englund, the “Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative” (CDLI), the world’s most important digital cuneiform library, which contains not only high-resolution reproductions of cuneiform tablets, but also transcriptions, catalog data and tools for electronic publication.  In his article for the book Peter Damerow was concerned particularly with the emergence of counting techniques in early high cultures. This soon became a central emphasis of his work, one which made him known all over the world: the emergence of writing and counting in Mesopotamia. Starting in 1982 Peter Damerow worked closely with the archeologist Hans Nissen and the philologist Robert K. Englund on archaic texts and proto-cuneiform script. Peter Damerow was one of the pioneers of what are called today the “digital humanities.” When he met Robert K. Englund in 1982, who had just begun as a research assistant to Hans Nissen at the time, he noticed a pile of punch cards in his office, which he brought right away to the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. His colleagues from the Near Eastern Archeology department had lost their technical support and could find no way to make any use of the data stored on these punch cards. Peter Damerow, in contrast, had the mathematician’s confidence that there must be a way to solve such a problem. He had access to the computing center of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and the necessary programming skills in LISP to process and evaluate the data. This was the beginning of the electronic Uruk project. Even back then Peter Damerow was deploying computer-aided methods of analysis to decode the domain-specific counting systems of early Babylonian mathematics, yielding a resounding success. This work led to his co-founding, along with Robert K. Englund, the “Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative” (CDLI), the world’s most important digital cuneiform library, which contains not only high-resolution reproductions of cuneiform tablets, but also transcriptions, catalog data and tools for electronic publication.