Lis Brack-Bernsen
Lis Brack-Bernsen (born 2 March 1946) is a Danish and Swiss mathematician, historian of science, and historian of mathematics, known for her work on Babylonian astronomy. She is an extraordinary professor of the history of science at the University of Regensburg. Education and career Brack-Bernsen was born in Copenhagen on 2 March 1946. She earned a diploma in mathematics with a minor in physics from the University of Copenhagen in 1970, with Olaf Schmidt as a mentor, and completed her Ph.D. in the history of mathematics in 1974 at the University of Basel, also with studies at Stony Brook University. Her dissertation was Die Basler Mayatafeln; astronomische Deutung der Inschriften auf den Türstürzen 2 und 3 aus Tempel IV in Tikal, and was promoted by J. O. Fleckenstein. She worked as a lecturer at the University of Copenhagen for 1974–1975, as a researcher at Stony Brook University from 1975 to 1977, and as a researcher in Grenoble and Regensburg from 1977 to 1979. However, at this time she left research to raise a family. In 1997 she completed her habilitation at Goethe University Frankfurt. She worked as a privatdozentin at Goethe University until 1999, when she moved to the University of Regensburg. Contributions Brack-Bernsen founded the “Regensburg” workshop series, which assembled specialists in Babylonian astronomy for intense and productive discussions about critical areas in the field. Following her inaugural 2002 workshop in Regensburg, which lent its name to the series, subsequent workshops were held in Amsterdam in 2004, Durham in 2008, and Berlin in 2014. Lunar Six One of Brack-Bernsen's most important contributions to the field of the history of the exact sciences was her identification of a method used by Babylonian astronomers for predicting the time between the rising and setting of the moon and sun, called the lunar six, that are preserved on tablet TU 11. The lunar six are a group of six time interval measurements used in Babylonian astronomy, consisting of four intervals measured around the full moon in the middle of the Babylonian lunar month, and two measured around the new moon. The four values measured in the middle of the month, often called the lunar four, include ŠU2 (moonset to sunrise), NA (sunrise to moonset), ME (moonrise to sunset), and GE6 (sunset to moonrise). ŠU2 and NA can be seen as measuring the same quantity — if the moon sets first, the interval is labelled ŠU2, while if the sunset comes first it is called NA. ME and GE6 are both measured on the eastern horizon, while ŠU2 and NA are both measured on the western horizon. At the beginning of the month, the interval NA measures the time from sunset to moonset, and on the day when the moon is seen for the last time the interval KUR measures moonrise to sunset. While much of Babylonian astronomy is rooted in the observation of these phenomena, astronomers developed ways of predicting values for the lunar six to both aid and supplement observational records. Brack-Bernsen