Otto E. Neugebauer, May 26, 1899 — February 19, 1990

"OTTO NEUGEBAUER WAS THE most original and productive scholar of the history of the exact sciences, perhaps of the history of science, of our age. He began as a mathematician, turned first to Egyptian and Babylonian mathematics, and then took up the history of mathematical astronomy, to which he afterward devoted the greatest part of his attention. In a career of sixty-five years, he to a great extent created our understanding of mathematical astronomy from Babylon and Egypt, through Greco-Roman antiquity, to India, Islam, and Europe of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Through his colleagues, students, and many readers, his influence on the study of the history of the exact sciences remains profound, even definitive..."