Professor Catherine Jami

Catherine Jami is a Research Director (equivalent to professor) at the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), and a member of its Research Unit CCJ (Chine, Corée, Japon). She is currently an Associate Researcher at the Needham Research Institute, Cambridge.

Trained in mathematics at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, and in Chinese studies at Université Paris-Diderot, she received her PhD at Université Paris-Nord (1985). She was a JSPS Fellow at Kansai University, Osaka, 1990-1991. She has been a CNRS researcher since 1991. She was the French Government Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge, 2004-2006. She was the editor of the journal East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine from 2017 to 2024. From 2013 to 2021, she served as Secretary General of the Division of History of Science of the International Union for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IUHPST). From 2020 to 2024, she was the Founding chair of the Standing Committee for Gender Equality in Science (SCGES), which coordinates the initiatives of 25 international scientific unions. She currently serves on the Governing Board of the International Science Council (ISC).

Her research focuses on the circulation of scientific knowledge between Europe and China since the 17th century. She has studied the part played by Jesuit missionaries as intermediaries, the role of Chinese scholars in the reception of European mathematics and the links between science and empire under the first monarchs of the Manchu Qing dynasty (1644-1911). Recent research topics include the construction of a mathematical terminology in the Manchu language, and the Qing imperial collection of scientific instruments. She is currently investigating the integration of European methods into Chinese mathematical astronomy, in collaboration with Prof. Christopher Cullen (Needham Research Institute). She is also contributing to ChEDIL, a research project on Chinese-European lexicographical manuscripts.