Eleanor Robson

Who is Eleanor Robson?

Eleanor Robson is a Reader in History and Philosophy of Science at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge University, vice-chair of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq and a Quondam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.

Robson is the author or co-author of several books on Mesopotamian culture and the history of mathematics. In 2003, she won the Lester R. Ford Award of the Mathematical Association of America for her work on Plimpton 322, a clay tablet of Babylonian mathematics; contrary to previous theories according to which this tablet represented a table of Pythagorean triples, Robson showed that it could have been a collection of school exercises in solving quadratic equations. She has also been widely quoted for her criticism of the U.S. Government's failure to prevent looting at the National Museum of Iraq during the Iraq War in 2003.