Ingeborg Hammer-Jensen

Ingeborg Hammer-Jensen (20 January 1880 – 6 April 1955) was a historian of science and classical philologist from Denmark. She was the third woman to be awarded a PhD in Denmark and was an expert on Greek scientific writing.

Early life Ingeborg Ellen Hammer was born on 20 January 1880 in Copenhagen. Her parents were choir director and herbalist Axel Evald Hammer, and her mother was Thora Christine Svendsen. Her thesis was entitled The Oldest Atomic Theory and argued that Plato was influenced by Democritus' natural theory. She wrote about potential relationships between the work of Democritus and Plato. She worked on dating the works of Heron to after the time of Ptolemy, basing this assertion on Heron's apparently superior scientific instruments and a potential criticism of Ptolemy's views on weight and volume relating to water. Her doctoral thesis advanced the idea that Democritus influenced Plato, and gained a substantial amount of attention after its publication.

In her later work The Oldest Alchemy, Hammer-Jensen examined the works of writes Zosimos, Olympiodor and Stephanos to explore ideas around the transition of materials from one form to another. However, one reviewer described her work as "fanciful". In it she emphasised a close relationship between medicine and alchemy, based on their experimental processes. However this idea was criticised by others who believed the awareness of medicine shown by these authors was what would be expected by an educated person at the time.

Later life On 11 October 1905, she married teacher Jens Christian Jensen; he wrote a widely used school textbook on natural science. 'Ptolemaios und Heron', Hermes (1913) 'Das sogenannte IV. Buch der Meteorologie des Aristoteles', Hermes (1915) Deux papyrus à contenu d'ordre chimique - Ingeborg Hammer Jensen (Reitzel, 1916) Die alteste Alchemie, Meddelelser fra den K. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, Hist-fil. Meddel., IV, no. 2 (Copenhagen, 1921) Catalogue des manuscrits alchimiques grecs: Volume 2: Les manuscrits italiens (1927) with Carlo Oreste Zuretti, Otto Lagercrantz, Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Domenico Bassi and Emidio Martini 'Die Heronische Frage', Hermes (1928)