This book explores some of the major turning points in the history of mathematics, ranging from ancient Greece to the present, demonstrating the drama that has often been a part of its evolution. Studying these breakthroughs, transitions, and revolutions, their stumbling-blocks and their triumphs, can help illuminate the importance of the history of mathematics for its teaching, learning, and appreciation. Some of the turning points considered are the rise of the axiomatic method (most famously in Euclid), and the subsequent major changes in it (for example, by David Hilbert); the “wedding,” via analytic geometry, of algebra and geometry; the “taming” of the infinitely small and the infinitely large; the passages from algebra to algebras, from geometry to geometries, and from arithmetic to arithmetics; and the revolutions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that resulted from Georg Cantor’s creation of transfinite set theory. The origin of each turning point is discussed, along with the mathematicians involved and some of the mathematics that resulted. Problems and projects are included in each chapter to extend and increase understanding of the material. Substantial reference lists are also provided. Turning Points in the History of Mathematics will be a valuable resource for teachers of, and students in, courses in mathematics or its history. The book should also be of interest to anyone with a background in mathematics who wishes to learn more about the important moments in its development.

This volume, originally published in China and translated into four other languages, presents a fascinating and unique account of the history of mathematics, 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. Each chapter explores connections among mathematics and cultural elements of the time and place treated, accompanying the reader in a varied and exciting journey through human civilizations. The book contemplates the intersections of mathematics with other disciplines, including the relationship between modern mathematics and modern art, and the resulting applications, with the aid of images and photographs, often taken by the author, which further enhance the enjoyment for the reader. Written for a general audience, this book will be of interest to anyone who's studied mathematics in university or even high school, while also benefiting researchers in mathematics and the humanities.

"The papers in this volume represent the talks given at the special session on the history of mathematics held at the annual meeting of the American Mathematical Society, San Francisco, California, January 7-11, 1981. The invited speakers were researchers of mathematics who spoke about some historical aspect of their particular area of interest. Thus, the presented papers were views of subjects through the eyes of those who helped shape, develop, contribute to them."--Introduction.

A History of Mathematics Education during the Twentieth Century describes the history of mathematics education in the United States with conceptual themes concerning philosophy, mathematics content, teacher education, pedagogy, and assessment. Each decade of the twentieth century is analyzed using historical documents, within the context of the aforementioned themes, to create a concise history of mathematical reform as it relates to history within the United States. Finally, conclusions are drawn as to which reform movements are similar and different throughout the century—depicting which aspects of reform can be seen again. Mathematics education tends to swing on a pendulum from "traditional education" including teacher-directed instruction with an emphasis on computation skills to "reform education," including student-directed instruction with an emphasis on problem solving. All decades are analyzed to see where they were on the pendulum and what aspects may have contributed to the current reform movements led by the Standards movement.

As an historiographic monograph, this book offers a detailed survey of the professional evolution and significance of an entire discipline devoted to the history of science. It provides both an intellectual and a social history of the development of the subject from the first such effort written by the ancient Greek author Eudemus in the Fourth Century BC, to the founding of the international journal, Historia Mathematica, by Kenneth O. May in the early 1970s.

Discover essays by leading scholars on the history of mathematics from ancient to modern times in European and non-European cultures.

A History of Mathematics: From Mesopotamia to Modernity 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. Containing more than 100 illustrations and figures, this text, aimed at advanced undergraduates and postgraduates, addresses the methods and challenges associated with studying the history of mathematics. The reader is introduced to the leading figures in the history of mathematics (including Archimedes, Ptolemy, Qin Jiushao, al-Kashi, al-Khwarizmi, Galileo, Newton, Leibniz, Helmholtz, Hilbert, Alan Turing, and Andrew Wiles) and their fields. An extensive bibliography with cross-references to key texts will provide invaluable resource to students and exercises (with solutions) will stretch the more advanced reader.

This volume contains eleven papers that have been collected by the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics/Société canadienne d’histoire et de philosophie des mathématiques. It showcases rigorously-reviewed contemporary scholarship on an interesting variety of topics in the history and philosophy of mathematics, as well as the teaching of the history of mathematics. Topics considered include The mathematics and astronomy in Nathaniel Torperly’s only published work, Diclides Coelometricae, seu valvae astronomicae universal Connections between the work of Urbain Le Verrier, Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi, and Augustin-Louis Cauchy on the algebraic eigenvalue problem An evaluation of Ken Manders’ argument against conceiving of the diagrams in Euclid’s Elements in semantic terms The development of undergraduate modern algebra courses in the United States Ways of using the history of mathematics to teach the foundations of mathematical analysis Written by leading scholars in the field, these papers are accessible not only to mathematicians and students of the history and philosophy of mathematics, but also to anyone with a general interest in mathematics.