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Chinese Hereditary Mathematician Families Of The Astronomical Bureau, 1620-1850, Ping-Ying Chang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation presents a research that relied on the online Archive of the Grand Secretariat at the Institute of History of Philology of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan and many digitized archival materials to reconstruct the hereditary mathematician families of the Astronomical Bureau in Qing China. The research found several patterns and strategies that these hereditary mathematician families exhibited during their long careers at the Astronomical Bureau. It found that family networks remained the most important channel that the Astronomical Bureau used to recruit new members until the last days of the Qing dynasty. Moreover, professional mathematicians at the Astronomical …