[Islamsci] Richard Lorch: 1942-2021

[Lutz Richter-bernburg]

Dear Benno, dear colleagues,
   It is not merely with sadness but with a twinge of conscience--for  
not having tried harder to stay in touch--that I read your  
announcement of Richard Lorch's death.  We went back quite some  
time...to Aleppo more than forty years ago.  -- It is somewhat  
soothing to learn that he was not entirely alone in his last weeks,  
but the fracture he suffered and its consequences make for somber  
reading, nearly like a textbook case.  R. I. P.
    Do take care, all of you, wherever you are.
    Sincerely,
    Lutz Richter-Bernburg

Zitat von Benno van Dalen <bvdalen at ptolemaeus.badw.de>:

> Dear colleagues,
>
> Dear friends,
>
> It is with great sadness that we inform you that Richard Lorch died  
> peacefully at the age of 78 in Warwick Hospital in Warwick, England  
> last Wednesday, 17 February 2021. He had had Parkinson disease for  
> more than ten years. On 26 January he broke his hip when he fell in  
> his flat. He received a hip replacement in the hospital, but did not  
> any more recover. His closest relatives were able to be with him  
> during his last hours.
>
> Richard Lorch was born on 13 June 1942 in Gravesend on the river  
> Thames, just east of London. He received his BA in mathematics in  
> 1964, and his MA in history and philosophy of science in 1965, both  
> from St. Johns College in Oxford. In 1971 he was awarded the PhD  
> degree by Manchester University for a dissertation entitled /Jābir  
> ibn Aflah and his Influence in the West‎/. Mathematics and astronomy  
> in the Arabic-Islamic world and its influence in Europe also  
> remained the focus of his research during the following decades.  
> Lorch had a one-year position at Birzeit University near Ramallah  
> (Palestine) and spent two years at the Institute for the History of  
> Arabic Science in Aleppo (Syria). The remainder of his academic  
> career he spent in Munich. Besides five years in the Kepler project  
> of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, he worked in a  
> series of projects that were funded by various German societies and  
> were hosted at the Oriental Institute and later by the Chair for  
> History of Science of Ludwig Maximilian University.
>
>
> Richard Lorch's most important publications consisted of editions of  
> Arabic and Latin texts with mathematical commentaries. His books  
> included /The Melon-Shaped Astrolabe in Arabic Astronomy/ (1999,  
> with Kennedy and Kunitzsch); //Thābit ibn Qurra. On the  
> Sector-Figure and Related Texts/ (2001); Al-Farghānī. On the  
> Astrolabe/ (2005), and, together with Paul Kunitzsch, /Theodosius,  
> Sphaerica. Arabic and Medieval Latin Translations/ (2011). A  
> selection of his articles were reprinted in the Variorum volume  
> /Arabic Mathematical Sciences: Instruments, Texts, Transmission/  
> (1995).
>
> Menso Folkerts
> Benno van Dalen