HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS.

Every culture on earth has developed some mathematics. In

some cases this mathematics has spread from one culture to
another. Now there is one predominant international
mathematics and this mathematics has quite a history.
According to Gouss C.F MATHEMATICS IS THE QUEEN OF
THE SCIENCE AND THE THEORY OF NUMBERS IS THE QUEEN
OF MATHEMATICS.

EGYPTIAN MATHEMATICS
The early Egyptians settled along the fertile
Nile valley as early as about 6000 BC, and
they began to record the patterns of lunar
phases and the seasons, both for agricultural
and religious reasons. The Pharaohs surveyors used
measurements base on body parts (a palm was the width

of the hand a cubit the measurement from elbow to fingertips)

to measure land and
buildings very early in
Egyptian history, and a
decimal numeric system
was developed based on
our ten fingers. The
oldest mathematical text
from ancient Egypt
discovered so far,
though, is the Moscow
Papyrus, which dates from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom
around 2000 - 1800 BC.
It is thought that
the Egyptians
introduced the
earliest fullydeveloped base 10
numeration system
at least as early as
2700 BC (and
Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic
probably much
early). Written numbers used a stroke for units, a heel-bone
symbol for tens, a coil of rope for hundreds numerals and a
lotus plant for thousands, as well as other hieroglyphic
symbols for higher powers of ten up to a million. However,
there was no concept of place value, so larger numbers were
rather unwieldy (although a million required just one
character, a million minus one required fifty-four characters).

The Rhind Papyrus, dating from around 1650 BC, is a kind of

instruction manual in arithmetic and geometry, and it gives us
explicit demonstrations of how multiplication and division was
carried out at that time. It also contains evidence of other
mathematical knowledge, including unit fractions, composite
and prime numbers, arithmetic, geometric and harmonic
means, and how to solve first order linear equations as well as
arithmetic and geometric series. The Berlin Papyrus, which
dates from around 1300 BC, shows that ancient Egyptians
could solve second-order algebraic (quadratic) equations.

Multiplication, for
example, was achieved
by a process of
repeated doubling, of
the number to be
multiplied on one side
and of one on the
other. These
corresponding blocks
of counters could then
Ancient Egyptian method of multiplication
be used as a kind of
multiplication reference table: first, the combination of powers
of two which add up to the number to be multiplied by was
isolated, and then the corresponding blocks of counters on the
other side yielded the answer.

This effectively made use of the concept of binary numbers,

over 3,000 years before Leibniz introduce it into the west, and
many more years before the development of the computer
was to fully explore its potential.
Practical problems of trade and the market led to the
development of a notation for fractions. The papyri which
have come down to us demonstrate the use of unit fractions
based on the symbol of the Eye of Horus, where each part of
the eye represented a different fraction, each half of the
previous one (i.e. half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth, thirtysecond, sixtyfourth), so that the
total was one-sixtyfourth short of a
whole, the first
known example of a
geometric series.
Unit fractions could
also be used for
simple division
Ancient Egyptian method of division
sums. For example,
if they needed to divide 3 loaves among 5 people, they
would first divide two of the loaves into thirds and the third
loaf into fifths, then they would divide the left over third from
the second loaf into five pieces. Thus, each person would
receive one-third plus one-fifth plus one-fifteenth (which totals
three-fifths, as we would expect).

The Egyptians approximated the area of a circle by using

shapes whose area they did know. They observed that the
area of a circle of diameter 9 units, for example, was very
close to the area of a square with sides of 8 units, so that the
area of circles of other diameters could be obtained by
multiplying the diameter by 89 and then squaring it. This gives
an effective approximation of accurate to within less than
one percent.
The pyramids themselves are another indication of the
sophistication of Egyptian mathematics. Setting aside claims
that the pyramids are first known structures to observe the
golden ratio of 1 : 1.618 (which may have occurred for purely
aesthetic, and not mathematical, reasons), there is certainly
evidence that they knew the formula for the volume of a
pyramid - 13 times the height times the length times the width
- as well as of a truncated or clipped pyramid.
They were also aware, long before Pythagoras, of the rule
that a triangle with sides 3, 4 and 5 units yields a perfect right
angle, and Egyptian builders used ropes knotted at intervals
of 3, 4 and 5 units in order to ensure exact right angles for
their stonework (in fact, the 3-4-5 right triangle is often called
"Egyptian").

ROMAN MATHEMATICS

By the middle of the 1st Century BC, the Roman had tightened
their grip on the old Greek and
Hellenistic empires, and the
mathematical revolution of
the Greeks ground to halt.
Roman numerals
Despite all their advances in
other respects, no mathematical innovations occurred under
the Roman Empire and Republic, and there were no
mathematicians of note. The Romans had no use for pure
mathematics, only for its practical applications, and the
Christian regime that followed it (after Christianity became
the official religion of the Roman empire) even less so.
Roman numerals are well known today, and
were the dominant number system for trade
and administration in most of Europe for the
best part of a millennium. It was decimal
(base 10) system but not directly positional,
and did not include a zero, so that, for
arithmetic and mathematical purposes, it was a clumsy and
inefficient system. It was based on letters of the Roman
alphabet - I, V, X, L, C, D and M - combines to signify the sum
of their values (e.g. VII = V + I + I = 7).
Later, a subtractive notation was also adopted, where VIIII, for
example, was replaced by IX (10 - 1 = 9), which simplified the
writing of numbers a little, but made calculation even more
difficult, requiring conversion of the subtractive notation at
the beginning of a sum and then its re-application at the
end .Due to the difficulty of written arithmetic using Roman
numeral notation, calculations were usually performed with an

abacus, based on earlier Babylonian and Greek abaci.

Roman Arithmetic

CHINESE MATHEMATICS
People in China were using written numbers by about 1500
BC, in the Shang Dynasty. This is about two
thousand years later than people began to
write numbers in West Asia, and more than a
thousand years later than people began to
write numbers in India. Nobody knows
whether people in China thought of the idea
to write numbers for themselves or learned it from people in
West Asia or India. Chinese people counted in base ten. But
the Chinese system was more efficient. In China, people wrote
the number 465 like this: 4 times the symbol for hundreds
plus 6 times the symbol for ten plus 5. This way of writing
numbers made it easier to do addition and multiplication than
the West Asian system, which used base 60. It is possible that
this way of calculating with place markers influenced later
Indian mathematicians who worked out the use of zero.

By 450 BC, Zu Chongzhi

was able to figure out
what pi was to seven
decimal places.
Sometime before 190
AD, people in Han
Dynasty China began to use the abacus. People in the Persian
Empire were probably using the abacus by 500 BC, and in
Greece by 300 BC, but we can't be sure whether the abacus
was invented in China or in West Asia.

GREEK MATHEMATICS
By the Hellenistic period, the Greeks had presided over one of
the most dramatic and important revolutions in mathematical
thought of all time.

The ancient Greek

numeral system,
known as Attic or
Herodianic numerals,
was fully developed by
about 450 BC, and in
regular use possibly as early as the 7th Century BC. It was a
base 10 system similar to the earlier Egyptian one (and even
more similar to the later Roman system), with symbols for 1,
5, 10, 50, 100, 500 and 1,000 repeated as many times needed
to represent the desired number. Addition was done by
totalling separately the symbols (1s, 10s, 100s, etc) in the
numbers to be added, and multiplication was a laborious
process based on successive doublings (division was based on
the inverse of this process).
But most of Greek mathematics was based on geometry.
Thales, one of the Seven Sages of Ancient Greece, who lived
on the Ionian coast of Asian Minor in the first half of the 6th
Century BC, is usually considered to have been the first to lay
down guidelines for the abstract development of geometry,
although what we know of his work (such as on similar and
right triangles) now seems quite elementary.
Thales established what has become known as Thales'
Theorem, whereby if a triangle is drawn within a circle with
the long side as a diameter of the circle, then the opposite
angle will always be a right angle (as well as some other
related properties derived from this). He is also credited with
another theorem, also known as Thales' Theorem or the
Intercept Theorem, about the ratios of the line segments that

are created if two intersecting lines

are intercepted by a pair of parallels
(and, by extension, the ratios of the
sides of similar triangles).
It was the Greeks who first grappled
with the idea of infinity, such as
described in the well-known
Thales Intercept Theorem
paradoxes attributed to the philosopher Zeno of Elea in the
5th Century BC. The most famous of his paradoxes is that of
Achilles and the Tortoise, which describes a theoretical race
between Achilles and a tortoise. Achilles gives the much
slower tortoise a head start, but by the time Achilles reaches
the tortoise's starting point, the tortoise has already moved
ahead. By the time Achilles reaches that point, the tortoise
has moved on again, etc, etc, so that in principle the swift
Achilles can never catch up with the slow tortoise.

Zeno's Paradox of Achilles and the tortoise

Paradoxes such as this one and Zeno's so-called Dichotomy

Paradox are based on the infinite divisibility of space and
time, and rest on the idea that a half plus a quarter plus an
eighth plus a sixteenth, etc, etc, to infinity will never quite
equal a whole. The paradox stems, however, from the false
assumption that it is impossible to complete an infinite
number of discrete dashes in a finite time, although it is
extremely difficult to definitively prove the fallacy. The ancient
Greek Aristotle was the first of many to try to disprove the
paradoxes, particularly as he was a firm believer that infinity
could only ever be potential and not real.

Indian Mathematics

The first known use of numbers in India was in the time of the
Harappans, about 3000 BC. Around this time, people in India
began using the counting tokens that people were already
using in West Asia. Soon afterwards, people changed over to
writing their numbers down, using pictographs. The
Harappans also developed standard weights (like ounces and
grams), and they were the earliest people to use base 10 for
their weights.

After climate change caused the Harappan civilization to

collapse, about 2000 BC, some invading Indo-Europeans ruled
India. This did not stop mathematical progress, and may even
have encouraged it, as the Indo-Europeans may have brought
Babylonian mathematical ideas to India. By 1800 BC, Indian
mathematicians were discussing the idea of infinity, pointing
out that "if you remove a part from infinity or add a part to
infinity, what remains is still infinity." As in Babylonia, a lot of
progress was made in geometry as a result of interest in
astronomy, and by 1300 BC the Indian astronomer Lagadha
used geometry to write a book of rules for the apparent
movement of the sun and moon. Nobody knows whether
Lagadha worked these rules out on his own, or learned about
them from the Babylonians.
By about 400 BC, Indian mathematicians were doing more
work on the idea of infinity. The Surya Prajinapti defines five
kinds of infinity: an infinite line beginning from an endpoint,
an infinite line going both directions, an infinite plane, an
infinite universe, and the infinity of time. This was about the
same time as the Buddha.
Around 300 BC, when Chandragupta was ruling India, Indian

mathematicians began working on the mathematical idea of

combinations. This is the study of how many combinations
you can make out of the same group of things.

Around the same time, Indian mathematicians worked out the

first beginnings of our
modern number system. By
100 AD, people in India
Indian numbers
were writing the numbers as
in the picture here. While
the numbers 1,2, and 3 are pretty clear, nobody knows where
the other signs came from. It may be that they were taken
from letters of an Indian alphabet.
Indian mathematicians' biggest invention was the use of zero
as a placeholder, to make it easier to add and multiply
numbers. Our word "zero" comes from the Sanskrit word
meaning "nothing." In 458 AD, Indian mathematicians wrote a
book, the Lokavibhaaga, that uses zero in this way.
With the formation of the Islamic Empire a few years later, the
use of zero spread quickly from India to West Asia and Africa
(by the 800s), and then more slowly to Christian Europe (not
until the 1200s AD, and only specialists used it until the
1500s).

ISLAMIC MATHEMATICS.
The best-known contribution by early Muslim mathematicians
was the transfer of Indian numerals, the concept of zero, and
its notation.

This transfer was a direct result of the

openness of Muslims to new ideas, and the
burst of exploration
Persian mathematician and astronomer
Muhammad Ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (780-850
CE), was appointed court astronomer at
Baghdad by the Abbasid Caliph Al-Mamun.
He is known in Latin as Algoritimi (from which the math and
computer term algorithm is derived). He is also known as the
father of algebra, from the title of his work, Hisab Al-Jabr wal
Muqabalah, The Book of Calculations, Restoration and
Reduction. He gave the name to that branch of mathematics.
In fact, his algebra was a book of arithmetic featuring Hindi
numerals -- a huge improvement over Roman numerals and
other systems of dots, pictographs, and finger reckoning. His
introduction of the Indian concept of zero, along with the
other nine digits, meant that mathematicians could express
any number. Algebra was a method for moving terms from
one side of an equation to the other to find the value of an
unknown. He also described how to find the square root of a
number, and was the first to demonstrate the concept of
exponents for unknown variables. He demonstrated the use of
equations, algebraic multiplication and division, and
measuring area.
Al-Battani (850-929 CE) contributed significant work
developing trigonometry, computing the first table of
cotangents. Al-Biruni (973-1050 CE) also advanced
trigonometry, and used it to calculate the coordinates of cities
to determine the qibla (direction of Makkah) from any
location. Omar Khayyam (b. 1048 CE) classified and solved
cubic equations.

By the 10th century, Muslim mathematicians had developed

and applied the theory of trigonometric functions -- sine,
cosine, and tangent -- as well as spherical trigonometry. They
used symbols to describe the binomial theorem, and used
decimals to express fractions that aided accurate solution of
complex problems.
Maslama al-Majriti (d. 1007 CE) was a mathematician and
astronomer who translated Ptolemys Almagest, and corrected
and added to al-Khwarizmis astronomical tables. Al-Majriti
also used advanced techniques of surveying using
triangulation.
Al-Zarqali, or Arzachel in Latin, was a mathematician and
astronomer who worked in Crdoba during the 11th century.
He was skilled at making instruments for the study of
astronomy, and built a famous water clock that could tell the
hours of the day and night, as well as the days of the lunar
month

No branch of mathematics is more visible

in Muslim culture than geometry.
Geometric design reached heights of skill
and beauty that was applied to nearly
every art form, from textiles to illustration
to architectural decoration. Tessellated, or
complex, overall patterns were used in
Andalusian architecture to cover walls, ceilings, floors and
arches. Some scholars of Islamic arts believe that these
designs were much more than artisans work -- they
consciously expressed the mathematical knowledge of the
culture that produced them.