MA 311/501: History of Mathematics

Mervyn H Sterne Library has one print copy on reserve for this course. Ask at the 1st floor HUB Desk. Since the text is on reserve, you will be limited in how long you can check out the text--most likely hours instead of days.

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Brings together an extensive collection of primary source materials that document the extraordinary breadth of mathematical ideas developed in the Eastern Mediterranean from 500 BCE to 500 CE, a millennium in which Greek cultural influence spanned the ancient world.

Medieval Europe was a meeting place for the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic civilizations, and the fertile intellectual exchange of these cultures can be seen in the mathematical developments of the time. This sourcebook presents original Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic sources of medieval mathematics, and shows their cross-cultural influences.

This is the story of the intellectual and social life of a community, and of its interactions with the wider world. For eight centuries mathematics has been researched and studied at Oxford, and the subject and its teaching have undergone profound changes during that time. This book reveals the richness and influence of Oxford's mathematical tradition and the fascinating characters that helped to shape it.

Recent historical research and new perspectives on the Islamic scientific tradition. Between A.D. 800 and 1450, the most important centers for the study of what we now call "the exact sciences" were not in Europe but in the vast, multinational Islamic world. Research from the last few decades has profoundly changed our understanding of the Islamic scientific tradition. We now know that it was richer and more profound and had more complex relations to other cultures than we had previously thought. This book offers an overview of this newly energized field of historical investigation.

Provides both an overview and a comprehensive and detailed survey of the main features of philosophy, science, medicine and technology in the Muslim world.

Brings together primary sources that highlight women's involvement in scientific knowledge production around the world. Primary sources are accompanied by an explanatory text, questions to prompt discussion, and a bibliography to aid further research. Arranged by time period, from 1200 BCE to the twenty-first century, and covering twelve inclusive and far-reaching themes.

Distills thousands of years of mathematics into a single, approachable volume. Covers mathematical discoveries, concepts, and thinkers, from Ancient Egypt to the present Includes up-to-date references and an extensive chronological table of mathematical and general historical developments.

Revised to make it more accessible to a general audience. A history of humankind's relationship with numbers. Updated and expanded, it now offers broadened coverage of twentieth century advances in probability and computers, and updated references to further reading. A feature that will be of interest to every reader is an appendix containing an extensive chronological table of mathematical and general historical developments.

Although each chapter can be read as a separate unit, there are many connecting threads. Stays as close to the original texts as is comfortable for a modern reader, and the bibliography enables a deeper dive into any aspect of ancient mathematics.

Concise introductory history of mathematics supplemented by brief but in-depth sketches of the more important individual topics. Covering such subjects as algebra symbols, negative numbers, the metric system, quadratic equations, and much more, this widely adopted work invites and encourages further study of mathematics.

Originally published in China. Divided into eight chronologically organized chapters. Tracing the development of mathematics across disparate regions and peoples, with particular emphasis on the relationship between mathematics and civilization, it examines mathematical sources and inspirations leading from Egypt, Babylon and ancient Greece and expanding to include Chinese, Indian and Arabic mathematics, the European Renaissance and the French revolution up through the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.

Covers the evolution of mathematics through time and across the major Eastern and Western civilizations. It begins in Babylon, then describes the trials and tribulations of the Greek mathematicians. The important, and often neglected, influence of both Chinese and Islamic mathematics is covered in detail, placing the description of early Western mathematics in a global context. The book concludes with modern mathematics, covering recent developments such as the advent of the computer, chaos theory, topology, mathematical physics, and the solution of Fermat's Last Theorem.

An Episodic History of Mathematics delivers a series of snapshots of the history of mathematics from ancient times to the twentieth century. The intent is not to be an encyclopedic history of mathematics, but to give the reader a sense of mathematical culture and history.

This book describes the world around the important mathematicians of the past, and explores the complex interaction between mathematics, mathematicians, and society.

Provides a new account of the rise of algebra in England from the Medieval period to the later years of the 17th century. Builds on work published in 1685 by John Wallis (Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford) on the history of algebra. Follows the reception and dissemination of important algebraic ideas and methods from continental Europe (especially those of Viete) and the consequent revolution in the state of English mathematics in the 17th century.

How our understanding of calculus has evolved over more than three centuries, how this has shaped the way it is taught in the classroom, and why calculus pedagogy needs to change.

This book examines the development of calculus in Britain during the century following Newton. Considers the importance of the work of mathematicians such as Isaac Newton, Roger Cotes, Brook Taylor, James Stirling, Abraham de Moivre, Colin Maclaurin, Thomas Bayes, John Landen and Edward Waring.

Isaac Newton Aos Principia is considered one of the masterpieces in the history of science. The mathematical methods employed by Newton in the Principia stimulated much debate among his contemporaries, especially Leibniz, Huygens, Bernoulli and Euler, who debated their merits and drawbacks. This book explains how Newton addressed these issues, taking into consideration the values that directed the research of Newton and his contemporaries.

Blend of history, biography, and mathematics. From the proto-trigonometry of the Egyptian pyramid builders and the first true trigonometry developed by Greek astronomers, to the epicycles and hypocycles of the toy Spirograph. Presents both a survey of the main elements of trigonometry and a unique account of its vital contribution to science and social growth.

Describes Euler's early mathematical works - the 50 mathematical articles he wrote before he left St. Petersburg in 1741 to join the Academy of Frederick the Great in Berlin. A portrait of the world's most exciting mathematics between 1725 and 1741.

Offers an interdisciplinary history of trigonometry that spans four centuries, starting in 1550 and concluding in the 1900s. Glen Van Brummelen tells the story of trigonometry as it evolved from an instrument for understanding the heavens to a practical tool, used in fields such as surveying and navigation.