Pingree devoted himself to the study of the exact sciences, such as mathematics, mathematical astronomy and astral omens. He was also acutely interested in the transmission of those sciences across cultural and linguistic boundaries. His interest in the transmission of the exact sciences came from two fronts or, perhaps more correctly, his interest represents two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, he was concerned with how one culture might appropriate, and so alter, the science of another (earlier) culture in order to make that earlier scientific knowledge more accessible to the recipient culture. On the other hand, Pingree was also interested in how scientific texts surviving from a later culture might be used to reconstruct or cast light on our fragmentary records of earlier sciences. In this quest, Pingree would, with equal facility use ancient Greek works to clarify Babylonian texts on divination, turn to Arabic treatises to illuminate early Greek astronomical and astrological texts, seek Sanskrit texts to explain Arabic astronomy, or track the appearance of Indian astronomy in medieval Europe.

• Babylonian Planetary Omens (with Erica Reiner: Brill, Leiden 2005)
• Census of the Exact Sciences in Sanskrit (5 vols., American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia 1970 et seq.)
• Arabic Astronomy in Sanskrit: Al-Birjand? on Tadhkira II, Chapter 11 and its Sanskrit Translation (with Takanori Kusuba: Brill, Leiden 2002).
• The Yavanaj?taka of Sphujidhvaja (2 vols., Harvard Oriental Series 48, 1978).
• Dorothei Sidonii carmen astrologicum (Teubner, Leipzig, 1976).
• Vettii Valentis Antiocheni Anthologiarum Libri Novem (Teubner, Leipzig , 1986).
• The Liber Aristotilis of Hugo of Santalla (edited with Charles Burnett Warburg Institute Surveys and Texts 26, London, 1997).

• Memorial by Kim Plofker and Bernard R. Goldstein in Aestimatio (http://www.ircps.org/publications/aestimatio/pdf/2005-06-03_Pingree.pdf#search=%22%22david%20edwin%20pingree%22%22)
• Death notice in the Brown Daily Herald http://www.browndailyherald.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticle&uStory_id=47d666ba-15db-402b-bd71-a539c61b03c5
• "An Indiana Jones of Mathematics" in the George Street Journal http://www.brown.edu/Administration/George_Street_Journal/Pingree.html
• A collection of PDFs of some texts used by Dr. Pingree and his students, including a copy of a Heiberg edition of the Almagest used by Dr. Pingree himself: http://www.wilbourhall.org