Clemency Montelle

Clemency Montelle (born 8 July 1977)^[1] is a New Zealand historian of mathematics known for her research on Indian mathematics and Indian astronomy.^[2][3] She is a professor of mathematics at the University of Canterbury,^[1][4] and a fellow of the New Zealand India Research Institute of the Victoria University of Wellington.^[5]

Education

Montelle is originally from Christchurch.^[2] She earned first class honours in mathematics and classical studies at the University of Canterbury in 1999, and completed a master's degree there in 2000.^[1] It was not until the fourth year of her studies that, finding a copy of Euclid in the original Greek, she realized that she could reconcile her two interests by working in the history of mathematics.^[2][3]

She became a Fulbright Scholar at Brown University, where she learned Cuneiform, Sanskrit, and Arabic.^[3][6] She completed a Ph.D. in the history of mathematics there in 2005;^[1] at Brown, her faculty mentors included David Pingree, Alice Slotsky, and Kim Plofker.^[7]

Service

Montelle was vice president of the Commission for the History of Ancient and Medieval Astronomy for the 2017–2021 term.^[8]

Books

Montelle is the author of the book Chasing Shadows: Mathematics, Astronomy, and the Early Reckoning of Eclipse theory (Johns Hopkins Press, 2011).^[9] With Kim Plofker, she is the coauthor of Sanskrit Astronomical Tables (Springer, 2019).^[10]