David Edwin Pingree (January 2, 1933 – November 11, 2005) was an American historian of mathematics in the ancient world.
He studied at Harvard University, where he earned his doctorate in 1960 with a dissertation on the supposed transmission of Hellenistic astrology to India.
[2] After completing his PhD, Pingree remained at Harvard for three more years as a member of its Society of Fellows before moving to the University of Chicago to accept the position of Research Associate at the Oriental Institute.
On the other hand, Pingree was also interested in how scientific texts surviving from a later culture might be used to reconstruct or cast light on our fragmentary records of earlier sciences.
The holdings consist of both antiquarian and recent materials published in Sanskrit, Arabic, Hindi, Persian and Western languages.