Notes on Contributors
Jean-Patrice Boudet is emeritus professor of medieval History at the University of Orléans. His book, Entre science et nigromance. Astrologie, divination et magie dans l’Occident médiéval (xiie–xve siècle), Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne, 2006, is a reference work in these fields. His last book, Astrologie et politique entre Moyen Âge et Renaissance, was published in 2020 (Florence, SISMEL, Ed. del Galluzzo).
Steven Vanden Broecke is Professor at Ghent University’s Department of History, specializing in early modern intellectual history and the history of science, and co-director of the Sarton Centre for the History of Science and the Humanities. His recent research has explored topics such as astrology, astronomy in the Catholic context, and the intersections of medicine and religion.
Charles Burnett (BA, PhD Cambridge), Professor Emeritus of Arabic/Islamic Influences in Europe at the Warburg Institute, University of London and Fellow of the British Academy. His research has concentrated on the translations of Arabic texts into Latin in the Middle Ages, in the fields of philosophy, science, religion and magic. Among his publications are The Introduction of Arabic Learning into England (1997); Arabic into Latin in the Middle Ages: The Translators and their Intellectual and Social Context (2009), Numerals and Arithmetic in the Middle Ages (2010), and The Great Introduction to Astrology by Abū Maʿšar (with Keiji Yamamoto, 2019).
Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum is an historian of astrology who teaches post-graduates at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. She received her PhD from the Warburg Institute, University of London. Her book, The Daimon in Hellenistic Astrology: Origins and Influence (Brill 2016) was based on her PhD research. She has written numerous articles on the history of astrology and its practices.
Stephan Heilen is Professor of Classics at the University of Osnabrück, Germany. His main field of research is the history of astrology from Greco-Roman antiquity to the Renaissance. He edited various Greek and Latin texts, especially the two Neo-Latin didactic poems by Laurentius Bonincontrius (15th c., publ. 1999) and the fragments of the Greek astrological manual of Antigonus of Nicaea (2nd c. AD; publ. 2015, with translation and substantial commentary). A monograph on Hartmann Schedel’s astral texts is forthcoming. Moreover, he is working on a three-volume project Konjunktionsprognostik in der Frühen Neuzeit (vol. 1, publ. 2020) and preparing, together with Claudio De Stefani, an anthology of Greek astrological poetry for the series Oxford Classical Texts.
David Juste is research leader of the projet Ptolemaeus Arabus et Latinus at the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften in Munich. His publications deal primarily with Latin astrology and astronomy in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
Jeffrey Kotyk (PhD, Leiden University, 2017) is presently a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany, where he is examining the history of astral iconography in historical East Asia. His past studies have broadly examined the transmission of astrology and related astral lore in premodern China and Japan. His recent monograph (Brill, 2024) is titled Sino-Iranian and Sino-Arabian Relations in Late Antiquity China and the Parthians, Sasanians, and Arabs in the First Millennium.
Levente László is a classicist with a current research interest in the history of astrology. He received his PhD in 2023 with a dissertation on Hellenistic inceptional astrology and the horoscopes of the emperor Zeno’s anonymous astrologer. An independent scholar and a translator of Hellenistic and Byzantine astrological texts, he has published on the textual history of various Hellenistic astrological works.
Christopher Lucken is Professor emeritus at the University of Paris 8 and former lecturer at the University of Geneva, Christopher Lucken is in particular a specialist of Richard de Fournival. He has recently published a monography devoted to this author, entitled Les portes de la mémoire. Richard de Fournival and the Arriereban d’Amours (Droz, 2024).
Günther Oestmann (b. 1959) has been trained as a clockmaker and received a PhD with a study on the astronomical and astrological significance of the clock in Strasbourg Cathedral in 1992. In 2013 the Musée international d’horlogerie (La Chaux-de-Fonds) awarded the ‘Prix Gaïa’ to him, and in 2014 he was elected as corresponding member of the International Academy of the History of Science (Paris). Three years later Oestmann was appointed as extraordinary professor for history of science at Technical University Berlin. Fields of research: History of scientific instruments and clocks, history of astronomy/astrology and mathematical geography, maritime history.
Luís Campos Ribeiro is a historian of science and art and a researcher at CIUHCT, University of Lisbon. He has been awarded a PhD in History and Philosophy of Sciences by the University of Lisbon, published by Brill with the title Jesuit Astrology: Prognostication and Science in Early Modern Culture (Brill, 2023). His research focuses on the history of astrology, astronomy and medicine (Medieval and Early Modern) as well as scientific illustration. Luís is the head of the Astra Project: Historical research on astrological techniques and practices, hosted by the CIUHCT, University of Lisbon and The Warburg Institute.
H Darrel Rutkin is a historian of science with a focus on the history of astrology in Europe, ca. 1250–1800. He is currently completing volume II of his three volume treatment of the history of astrology and magic, which is focused on the Renaissance and treats primarily Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494), both in themselves and in relation to each other.
Petra G. Schmidl is a historian of science with a focus on pre-modern astronomy, astronomical instruments, and astrology, prognostic practices, and occult sciences in Islamicate societies. She is mainly interested in procedures and methods that help people in orienting themselves in every day life, e.g., timekeeping and prognostic practices. Her recent research project aims at the edition, English translation, commentary and study of the Kitāb al-Tabṣira fī ˁilm al-nujūm (“Enlightenment in the science of the stars”) written by the future Rasūlid sultan al-Ashraf ˁUmar in thirteenth century Yemen.
Susan Ward is an independent researcher specializing in the history of astrology, with a particular focus on its practical applications and broader significance. Her work primarily focuses on the early modern period, and for over forty years, she has studied the life and works of the astrologer William Lilly (1602–1681) and his contemporaries. She earned a first-class degree in history from the University of East Anglia, where she specialized in the British Civil Wars. Currently, Ward is engaged in a major project—a three-volume edition of William Lilly’s work and relationships, offering essential primary sources for researchers.