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The word "mathematics" comes from the which means "science, knowledge, or learning"; means "fond of learning". Today, the term refers to a specific body of knowledge -- the deductive study of quantity, structure, space, and change. The area of study known as the history of mathematics is primarily an investigation into the origin of new discoveries in mathematics, to a lesser extent an investigation into the standard mathematical methods and notation of the past. Before the modern age and the worldwide spread of knowledge, written examples of new mathematical developments have come to light only in a few locales. The most ancient mathematical texts available are from ancient Mesopotamia circa 1900 BC , ancient Egypt circa 1800 BC and ancient India circa 800 BC . All of these texts concern the so-called Pythagorean theorem, which seems to be the most ancient and widespread mathematical development after basic arithmetic and geometry. The Ancient Greek contribution to mathema More »
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Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on diverse subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry , biology and zoology, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, and ethics. Along with Socrates and Plato, Aristotle was one of the most influential of the ancient Greek philosophers. They transformed Presocratic Greek philosophy into the foundations of Western philosophy as we know it. Some consider Plato and Aristotle to have founded... More »
Indian mathematics
Indian mathematics—which here is the mathematics that emerged in South Asia from ancient times until the end of the 18th century—had its beginnings in the Bronze Age Indus Valley civilization and the Iron Age Vedic culture . In the classical period of Indian mathematics , important contributions were made by scholars like Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, and Bhaskara II. Indian mathematicians made early contributions to the study of the decimal number system, zero, negative numbers,... More »
Charles Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce , was an American polymath, physicist, and philosopher, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Although Peirce was educated as a chemist and was employed as a scientist for 30 years, it is for his contributions to logic, mathematics, philosophy, and the theory of signs, or semiotics, that he is largely appreciated today. The philosopher Paul Weiss, writing in the ''Dictionary of American Biography'' for 1934, called Peirce "the most original and versatile of American... More »
Islamic mathematics
In the history of mathematics, Islamic mathematics or Arabic mathematics refers to the mathematics developed by the Islamic civilization between 622 and 1600. While most scientist in this period were Muslim and Arabic was the dominant language, contributions were made by people of many religions and ethnic groups . The center of Islamic mathematics was located in present-day Iraq and Iran, but at its greatest extent stretched from Turkey, North Africa and Spain in the west, to the border of... More »
Rhind Mathematical Papyrus
The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus , is named after Alexander Henry Rhind, a Scottish antiquarian, who purchased the papyrus in 1858 in Luxor, Egypt; it was apparently found during illegal excavations in or near the Ramesseum. The British Museum, where the papyrus is now kept, acquired it in 1864 along with the Egyptian Mathematical Leather Roll, also owned by Henry Rhind; there are a few small fragments held by the Brooklyn Museum in New York. It is one of the two well-known Mathematical Papyri... More »
Babylonian mathematics
Babylonian mathematics refers to any mathematics of the peoples of Mesopotamia , from the days of the early Sumerians to the fall of Babylon in 539 BC. In contrast to the sparsity of sources in Egyptian mathematics, our knowledge of Babylonian mathematics is derived from some 400 clay tablets unearthed since the 1850s. Written in Cuneiform script, tablets were inscribed whilst the clay was moist, and baked hard in an oven or by the heat of the sun. More »
Hilbert's problems
Hilbert's problems are a list of twenty-three problems in mathematics put forth by German mathematician David Hilbert at the Paris conference of the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1900. The problems were all unsolved at the time, and several of them turned out to be very influential for 20th century mathematics. Hilbert presented ten of the problems at the conference, speaking on 8 August in the Sorbonne; the full list was published later. More »
Greek mathematics
Greek mathematics, as that term is used in this article, is the mathematics written in Greek, developed from the 6th century BC to the 5th century AD around the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean. More »
Liu Hui
Liu Hui 劉徽 was a Chinese mathematician who lived in the 200s AD in the Wei Kingdom. In 263 he published a book with solutions to mathematical problems presented in the famous Chinese book of mathematics known as ''Jiuzhang Suanshu'' or ''The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art''. More »
Egyptian mathematics
Egyptian mathematics refers to the style and methods of mathematics performed in Ancient Egypt. More »
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