Glen Robert Van Brummelen (born May 20, 1965) is a Canadian historian of mathematics specializing in the history of trigonometry and historical applications of mathematics to astronomy.
He is president of the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics,CSHPM Council , retrieved 2013-12-26. and was a co-editor of Mathematics and the Historian's Craft: The Kenneth O. May Lectures (Springer, 2005).
He has been involved in the summer program Mathpath since 2004 and is the creator of "Glensheep" and their evolution. MathPath Faculty and Staff
Life Van Brummelen earned his PhD degree from Simon Fraser University in 1993, and served as a professor of mathematics at Bennington College from 1999 to 2006. He then transferred to Quest University Canada as a founding faculty member. In 2020, he became the dean of the Faculty of Natural and Applied Sciences at Trinity Western University in Langley, BC.
Glen Van Brummelen has published the first major history in English of the origins and early development of trigonometry, The Mathematics of the Heavens and the Earth: The Early History of Trigonometry.McRae, Alan S. (2009), Review of The Mathematics of the Heavens and the Earth, . His second book, Heavenly Mathematics: The Forgotten Art of Spherical Trigonometry, concerns spherical trigonometry.Funk, Martin (2013), Review of Heavenly Mathematics, .
In 2016 he received a Deborah and Franklin Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics.
As of 2026 he is on sabbatical as an Erskine Fellow at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. He was previously awarded the Erskine Fellowship in 2010, 2017 and 2019.
Works The Mathematics of the Heavens and the Earth: The Early History of Trigonometry Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2009. , Heavenly Mathematics: The Forgotten Art of Spherical Trigonometry Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013. , Trigonometry: A Very Short Introduction; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2020 , The Doctrine of Triangles: The History of Modern Trigonometry Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2021 ,
References
External links Homepage at Bennington College Glen R. Van Brummelen, Ph.D. homepage at Trinity Western University Publication list Trigonometry Book page