Cet ouvrage du mathématicien indien C.K. Raju aborde la transmission vers l'Europe du calcul, de l'astronomie et de la trigonométrie, et leur prétendue redécouverte à la Renaissance et propose une restauration des sources indiennes, persanes et arabes.
C. K. Raju holds a masters in mathematics from Mumbai, followed by a PhD from the Indian Statistical Institute. He taught mathematics for several years at Pune University before moving on to help build India's first parallel supercomputer, Param. After a fellowship at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, and the National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies, he resumed university teaching, and is currently a Distinguished Professor. He has proposed many radical new ideas related to time, quantum mechanics, quantum computing and the history and philosophy of mathematics, and calculus. He has written critically acclaimed books on physics (Time: Towards a Consistent Theory, Kluwer, 1994), history and philosophy of mathematics (Cultural Foundations of Mathematics, Pearson Longman, 2007), on time at the interface of science, religion and ethics (The Eleven Pictures of Time, Sage, 2003), and on the history of science (Is Science Western in Origin?, Multiversity and Citizens International, Penang, 2009). For a full list of his books, see http://ckraju.net. He straddles various fields, and was an editor of the Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research and curently advices other scholarly journals. He has also built computer software for industrial and educational use. Volume 5 of his collected papers contains his scholarly articles on mathematics and religion. In his "5-day course on calculus", he has demonstrated that mathematics can be made very easy by eliminating the post-Crusade theology in it. Watch out for more of his forthcoming books, especially "Euclid and Jesus".