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In the context of classes, it is very often that discussion on the history of mathematics arises, whether it'd be on who should a lemma be attributed to or a certain event that occurred during the discovery of the proof (the elementary proof of the prime number theorem is one such example).

My question is:

What does a math historian do? Is he simply a mathematician who dabbles in search for the history behind his research or does he commit his time fully investigating past mathematical facts? Also, is it closer in nature to mathematics or is it closer in nature to history (i.e. is the context behind the discovery of the proof emphasized or is the insight that led to the proof emphasized)?

EDIT: Due to the nature of some of the answers, I am now curious to as to whether math historians are mathematicians or historians (ie do they work in math departments or history departments). Does anyone have an answer to this?

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    History of mathematics is a highly specialized branch of scholarship that requires full commitment. It is not a collection of anecdotes, fun though these can be. And yes, intellectual context is the main thing.2012-06-04
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    @AndréNicolas That sentence came out not as I intended. I meant that I don't often see math history programs being offered at the PhD level at math departments. So I was wondering if most math historians are actually hired as research mathematicians in other specialized fields but do math history on top of their research as well. From the answer though is seems that they are offered by history departments instead rendering that part moot.2012-06-04
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    The ones I have known are in history departments, occasionally in Classics, or have joint appointments.2012-06-04
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    You might take a look at [Judy Grabiner’s home page](http://bernard.pitzer.edu/~jgrabine/); it’ll give you an idea of the what one well-known historian of mathematics does and what her academic background is.2012-06-04
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    Surely they're historians, even though it's not nice to add to your question after a day.2012-06-05
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    @Gigili Ok then. I'm removing my comments to avoid cluttering up this space.2012-06-05
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    A good online source for everything about the History of Mathematics is [MacTutor](http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/). When it was written the two authors were active mathematicians, although both are now retired. Despite their retirement, students at St Andrews can do a course (and I believe honours projects) on the history of mathematics. I am unsure about PhD students though, but I think one of them was jointly supervising a student with the history department.2012-06-05

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