Welcome to History of Mathematics

MAT 336

Notes

Below there is a paper or book chapter about the topics that were assigned to each of the students.

In a few cases, there are two papers about the same topic. If your topic is one of those, you can choose on which of those to paper you will write the report.

The book Journey through genius, which can be the source for some topics, is in the Math Library.

Presentations topics and papers (somewhat organized)

History of

  1. History of the number e
  2. The rule of false position
  3. The origin of polar coordinates
  4. Cavalieri's Method of Indivisible
  5. The secret spiritual history of calculus
  6. Historical Stages in the Definition of Curves
  7. History of Platonic solids
  8. History of the Euclidean Steiner tree problem
  9. History of the Cycloid see also Journey through genius
  10. Origin and Evolution of the Secant Method in One Dimension
  11. The Lengths of Curves
  12. History of the binomial theorem
  13. History of the Normal Distribution
  14. History of Hyperbolic Geometry
  15. History of Fermat last Theorem
  16. Japanese Temple Geometry
  17. Gauss-Jordan Reduction: A Brief History
  18. Multiplication from Lilavati to the Summa
  19. Right-Angled Triangles in Ancient China
  20. Tangency and Optimization without Limits
  21. Fermat Last Theorem
  22. Ideas of calculus in the Islamic word
  23. Ideas of calculus in India
  24. The beginnings of probability and the Problem of Points

Interesting people and their ideas

  1. Thales and the Height of the great pyramid of Giza.
  2. Archimedes and the quadrature of the parabola
  3. Heron's Formula for Triangular Area Journey through genius
  4. How Ptolemy constructed trigonometry tables
  5. Diophantus and the birth of literal algebra
  6. Omar Khayyam, mathematician
  7. The Remarkable Ibn al-Haytham
  8. The Algebra of Abu Kamil
  9. Aryabhata and Ancient Indian methods for computing square root
  10. Ramanujan's Notebooks (also The Indian Mathematician Ramanujan)
  11. Saccheri on non-Euclidean geometry
  12. How Kepler Discovered the Elliptical Orbit
  13. The Discovery of Ceres: How Gauss Became Famous
  14. Fermat on Number Theory
  15. Fermat's Method of Finding Areas under Graphs. . See also Here.
  16. Hamilton on the Discovery of Quaternions
  17. Euler and the proof of the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra
  18. Euler and the bridges of Konigsberg
  19. Euler's Contribution to Number Theory see also Journey through genius
  20. Cauchy and the Origins of Rigorous Calculus
  21. Viète, Descartes and the Cubic Equation
  22. Gauss and the Regular Polygon of Seventeen Sides
  23. Gauss and the Discovery of Ceres
  24. Cantor and The Non-Denumerabilty of the Continuum on Journey through genius
  25. Newton and the binomial theorem, see also Journey through Genius by William Dunham.
  26. The Bernoullis and the Harmonic Series, see Journey through Genius by William Dunham.
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