Brentjes is the daughter of archaeologists, orientalists, and Islamists
Burchard Brentjes [
de] and Helga Wilke Brentjes.[2]
She earned a diploma in mathematics from
TU Dresden in 1973 and completed her doctorate (
Dr. rer. nat.) there in 1977.[3] Her doctoral dissertation, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der linearen Optimierung von den Anfängen zur Konstituierung als selbständige mathematische Theorie - eine Studie zum Problem der Entstehung mathematischer Disziplinen im 20. Jahrhundert, concerned the history of
linear programming, and was supervised by
Hans Wussing.[4] She earned a second diploma in Near Eastern studies in 1982 from
Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, a second doctorate (
Dr. sc. nat.) from
Leipzig University in 1989, and a
habilitation from Leipzig University in 1991.[3]
Ibn Sina (Avicenna): Der fürstliche Meister aus Buchara (with Burchard Brentjes, Teubner, 1979)[7]
Travellers from Europe in the Ottoman and Safavid Empires, 16th–17th Centuries: Seeking, Transforming, Discarding Knowledge (Ashgate, 2010)[8]
Globalization of Knowledge in the Post-Antique Mediterranean, 700–1500 (edited with Jürgen Renn, Routledge, 2016)[9]
1001 Distortions: How (Not) to Narrate History of Science, Medicine, and Technology in Non-Western Cultures (edited with Taner Edis and Lutz Richter-Bernburg, Ergon Verlag, 2016)[10]
Teaching and Learning the Sciences in Islamicate Societies (800–1700) (Brepols, 2018)[11]
Iqbal, Muzaffar (Summer 2011),
"Review", Islam & Science, 9 (1): 56–61
Rius, Mònica (2012),
"Review", Suhayl: International Journal for the History of the Exact and Natural Sciences in Islamic Civilisation, 11: 253–255
Tommasino, Pier Mattia (January 2012), Journal of Early Modern History, 16 (3): 281–284,
doi:
10.1163/157006512x624155{{
citation}}: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (
link)
Schmidl, Petra (February 2012), NTM Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technik und Medizin, 20 (1): 54–56,
doi:10.1007/s00048-011-0064-3{{
citation}}: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (
link)
Nayar, Pramod K. (Summer 2012), The Sixteenth Century Journal, 43 (2): 489–491,
JSTOR24245445{{
citation}}: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (
link)