Olaf Pedersen (8 April 1920 – 3 December 1997) was a Danish historian of science who was "leading authority on astronomy in classical antiquity and the Latin middle ages.
In 1956 the Munksgaard publishing house issued a 290 page volume for Acta historica scientariarum naturalium et medicinalium (volume #13) on Nicole Oresme: Nicole Oresme og hans naturfilosofiske system: en undersogelse af hans skrift "Le livre du ciel et du monde".
(page 188) Reviewer George Saliba commented, "One would prefer that such statements were not written, for they reflect on a vision of history that makes the development of science depend on such haphazard accidents,..."[2] Pedersen also published An Survey of the Almagest (1974).
He wrote that the "main thrust of the book is to present medieval universities as institutions which can only be understood in relation to broader political and social developments.
A balanced review was given by H. E. J. Cowdrey: "Perhaps the most valuable chapters of the book are those which concern the classical inheritance of medieval higher education and the transition from ancient science to monistic learning."
On the other hand, Cowdrey notes a "disconcerting number of factual errors", "too much attention is given to relatively unimportant topics", and "very little account indeed has been taken of scholarly work published since the early 1970s.