Yelda Nasifoglu

(Residential Fellow, 2020-21)

Yelda Nasifoglu

Residential Fellow

Reading and Collecting Mathematics in Early Modern Britain

Dr. Yelda Nasifoglu is a historian of early modern mathematics and architecture, and an Associate Member of the Faculty of History, University of Oxford. She was trained as an architect in New York, studied history of science, medicine, and technology at Oxford, and received her doctorate in the history and theory of architecture from McGill University with her dissertation “Robert Hooke’s Praxes: Reading, Drawing, Building” (2018). She has been a researcher with the AHRC-funded project “Reading Euclid’s Elements of Geometry in Early Modern Britain and Ireland” based at Oxford, research assistant with the “Early Modern Conversions” project based at McGill, and is one of the editors of the “Robert Hooke’s Books” database. Her research interests include mathematical diagrams, non-representational uses of drawing, cross-pollinations between mathematics and architecture, different conceptions of praxis, and book collecting practices in the early modern period. She is currently working on a digital humanities project titled “Catalogue of Catalogues: A Database of British Book Catalogues, in Print and Manuscript, up to 1700”. During her fellowship at the Linda Hall Library, she will study mathematical books printed up to 1700, paying particular attention to ownership inscriptions and annotations.