Samuel Gessner

Research interests

• History of mathematics (séculos XV a XVII);
• Mathematical culture and sub-cultures among savants, teachers, at court, in the workshops and in the field;
• Technical treatises in the first centuries of the printing press;
• The role of mathematical instruments in early modern science.

Projects

• "Cultures of mathematics: instruments, astraria and clocks between practical and theoretical mathematics at the eve of the modern age of Europe" (FCT 2020.02581.CEECIND), (2021-2026)

​​​​​​​Participation

• "DISHAS / diagrams - digital humanities for analyzing and editing astronomical diagrams" (SYRTE, Observatoire de Paris), 2021- .
• "Deus ex Machina: vision of the world and cosmos in planetary automata of the Renaissance" (MPS, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden), 2012- .
• ALFA, "Shaping a European scientific scene: Alfonsine astronomy" (ERC project 2016, agreement n° 723085), 2019-2021.

Publications (selection)

1. Samuel Gessner, "Trepidation spheres: variant representations of the Eighth Sphere and the debate about the movement of the apogees and the fixed stars in Alfonsine astronomy", Centaurus, [in press]

2. Karsten Gaulke, Michael Korey, SAMUEL GESSNER, “Clocks as Astronomical Models. ‘The heavens daily in view’: Planetary clocks in Europe, 14th–16th century“, in Anthony Turner, Jonathan Betts, James Nye eds., A General History of Horology, Oxford, Oxford University Press [forthcoming end 2021].
3. SAMUEL GESSNER, Karsten Gaulke, Michael Korey, “The Anomalous Sun: Variant Mechanical Realizations of Solar Theory on Planetary Automata of the Renaissance”, Nuncius. Journal for the history of material and visual culture of science, vol. 35, n. 2, 2020, p. 191-234.
4. SAMUEL GESSNER, “The perspective of the instrument maker: The planispheric projection with Gemma Frisius and the Arsenius workshop at Louvain”, Sven Dupré ed., Perspective as practice. Renaissance Cultures of Optics, Turnhout, Brepols Publishers, 2019, p. 103-122, 480, 481.
5. Dominique Raynaud, SAMUEL GESSNER, Bernardo Mota, “Andalò di Negro’s De compositione astrolabii: a critical edition with English translation and notes”, Archive for History of Exact Sciences, vol. 73, 2019, p. 551–617.
6. Michael Korey, SAMUEL GESSNER, Claudia Bergmann(ill.), Der Planeten wundersamer Lauf. Eine Himmelsmaschine für Kurfürst August von Sachsen, Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon, Dresden, 2017.