POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES

College of Accountancy and Finance

Sta. Mesa Manila

PREHISTORIC MATHEMATICS

Early man kept track of regular occurrences such as the

phases of the moon and the seasons. Some of the very
earliest evidence of mankind thinking about numbers is
from notched bones in Africa dating back to 35,000 to
20,000 years ago. But this is really mere counting and
tallying rather than mathematics as such.

Pre-dynastic Egyptians and Sumerians represented

geometric designs on their artefacts as early as the 5th
millennium BCE, as did some megalithic societies in northern Europe in the 3rd millennium BCE or before. But
this is more art and decoration than the systematic treatment of figures, patterns, forms and quantities that has
come to be considered as mathematics.

According to some authorities, there is evidence of basic arithmetic and geometric notations on the petroglyphs
at Knowth and Newgrange burial mounds in Ireland (dating from about 3500 BCE and 3200 BCE respectively).
These utilize a repeated zig-zag glyph for counting, a system which continued to be used in Britain and Ireland
into the 1st millennium BCE. Stonehenge, a Neolithic ceremonial and astronomical monument in England, which
dates from around 2300 BCE, also arguably exhibits examples of the use of 60 and 360 in the circle measurements,
a practice which presumably developed quite independently of the sexagesimal counting system of the
ancient Sumerian and Babylonians.

SUMERIAN/BABYLONIAN MATHEMATICS

Sumer (a region of Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq) was

the birthplace of writing, the wheel, agriculture, the arch,
the plow, irrigation and many other innovations, and is
often referred to as the Cradle of Civilization. The
Sumerians developed the earliest known writing system
- a pictographic writing system known as cuneiform
script, using wedge-shaped characters inscribed on
baked clay tablets.

As in Egypt, Sumerian mathematics initially developed

largely as a response to bureaucratic needs when their
civilization settled and developed agriculture (possibly
as early as the 6th millennium BCE) for the measurement
of plots of land, the taxation of individuals, etc. In addition, the Sumerians and Babylonians needed to describe
quite large numbers as they attempted to chart the course of the night sky and develop their sophisticated lunar
calendar.

Sumerian and Babylonian mathematics was based on a sexegesimal, or base 60, numeric system. Unlike those of
the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, Babylonian numbers used a true place-value system, where digits written in
the left column represented larger values, much as in the modern decimal system, although of course using base
60 not base 10.

We have evidence of the development of a complex system of metrology in Sumer from about 3000 BCE, and
multiplication and reciprocal (division) tables, tables of squares, square roots and cube roots, geometrical
exercises and division problems from around 2600 BCE onwards. Later Babylonian tablets dating from about
1800 to 1600 BCE cover topics as varied as fractions, algebra, methods for solving linear, quadratic and even
some cubic equations, and the calculation of regular reciprocal pairs (pairs of number which multiply together to
give 60). One Babylonian tablet gives an approximation to √2 accurate to an astonishing five decimal places.

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Others list the squares of numbers up to 59, the cubes of numbers up to 32 as well as tables of compound interest.
Yet another gives an estimate for π of 3 1⁄8 (3.125, a reasonable approximation of the real value of 3.1416).

The Babylonians used geometric shapes in their buildings and design and in dice for the leisure games which
were so popular in their society, such as the ancient game of backgammon. Their geometry extended to the
calculation of the areas of rectangles, triangles and trapezoids, as well as the volumes of simple shapes such as
bricks and cylinders (although not pyramids).

The famous and controversial Plimpton 322 clay tablet, believed to date from around 1800 BCE, suggests that
the Babylonians may well have known the secret of right-angled triangles (that the square of the hypotenuse
equals the sum of the square of the other two sides) many centuries before the Greek Pythagoras. The tablet
appears to list 15 perfect Pythagorean triangles with whole number sides, although some claim that they were
merely academic exercises, and not deliberate manifestations of Pythagorean triples.

EGYPTIAN MATHEMATICS

The early Egyptians settled along the fertile Nile

valley as early as about 6000 BCE, and they began
to record the patterns of lunar phases and the
seasons, both for agricultural and religious
reasons. The Pharaoh’s surveyors used
measurements based on body parts 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
BCE.

It is thought that the Egyptians introduced the earliest fully-developed base 10 numeration system at least as early
as 2700 BCE (and probably much early). 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 BCE, 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 BCE, shows that ancient Egyptians could
solve second-order algebraic (quadratic) equations.

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 - 1⁄3 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")

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GREEK MATHEMATICS

The ancient Greek numeral system, known as Attic or Herodianic

numerals, was fully developed by about 450 BCE, It was a base 10
system similar to the earlier Egyptian one, 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 BCE,

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. 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.

Three geometrical problems in

particular, often referred to as the Three Classical Problems, and all to be
solved by purely geometric means using only a straight edge and a compass,
date back to the early days of Greek geometry: “the squaring (or quadrature)
of the circle”, “the doubling (or duplicating) of the cube” and “the trisection
of an angle”. These intransigent problems were profoundly influential on
future geometry and led to many fruitful discoveries, although their actual
solutions (or, as it turned out, the proofs of their impossibility) had to wait
until the 19th Century.

GREEK MATHEMATICS

▪ PYTHAGORAS

It is sometimes claimed that we owe pure mathematics to Pythagoras, and he is often called the first "true"
mathematician. But, although his contribution was clearly important, he nevertheless remains a controversial
figure. He left no mathematical writings himself, and much of what we know about Pythagorean thought comes
to us from the writings of Philolaus and other later Pythagorean scholars.

The over-riding dictum of Pythagoras's school was “All is number” or “God is number”, and the Pythagoreans
effectively practised a kind of numerology or number-worship, and considered each number to have its own
character and meaning.

He is mainly remembered for what has become known as Pythagoras’ Theorem (or the Pythagorean Theorem):
that, for any right-angled triangle, the square of the length of the hypotenuse (the longest side, opposite the right
angle) is equal to the sum of the square of the other two sides (or “legs”). Written as an equation: a2 + b2 = c2.

Among his other achievements in geometry, Pythagoras (or at least his followers, the Pythagoreans) also realized
that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles (180°), and probably also the generalization
which states that the sum of the interior angles of a polygon with n sides is equal to (2n - 4) right angles, and that
the sum of its exterior angles equals 4 right angles. They were able to construct figures of a given area, and to use
simple geometrical algebra, for example to solve equations such as a(a - x) = x2 by geometrical means. Pythagoras

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is also credited with the discovery that the intervals between harmonious musical notes always have whole number
ratios

▪ PLATO

Although usually remembered today as a philosopher, Plato was also one of ancient Greece’s most important
patrons of mathematics. Inspired by Pythagoras, he founded his Academy in Athens in 387 BCE, where he
stressed mathematics as a way of understanding more about reality. In particular, he was convinced that geometry
was the key to unlocking the secrets of the universe. The sign above the Academy entrance read: “Let no-one
ignorant of geometry enter here”.

Plato the mathematician is perhaps best known for his identification of 5

regular symmetrical 3-dimensional shapes, which he maintained were the
basis for the whole universe, and which have become known as the
Platonic Solids: the tetrahedron (constructed of 4 regular triangles, and
which for Plato represented fire), the octahedron (composed of 8 triangles,
representing air), the icosahedron (composed of 20 triangles, and
representing water), the cube (composed of 6 squares, and representing
earth), and the dodecahedron (made up of 12 pentagons, which Plato
obscurely described as “the god used for arranging the constellations on
the whole heaven”).

HELLENISTIC MATHEMATICS

By the 3rd Century BCE, in the wake of the conquests of Alexander the Great,
mathematical breakthroughs were also beginning to be made on the edges of
the Greek Hellenistic empire.In particular, Alexandria in Egypt became a
great centre of learning under the beneficent rule of the Ptolemies, and its
famous Library soon gained a reputation to rival that of the Athenian
Academy. The patrons of the Library were arguably the first professional
scientists, paid for their devotion to research. Among the best known and most
influential mathematicians who studied and taught at Alexandria
were Euclid, Archimedes, Eratosthenes, Heron, Menelaus and Diophantus.

In the 1st century BCE, Heron (or Hero) was another great Alexandrian inventor,
best known in mathematical circles for Heronian triangles (triangles with integer
sides and integer area), Heron’s Formula for finding the area of a triangle from
its side lengths, and Heron’s Method for iteratively computing a square root. He
was also the first mathematician to confront at least the idea of √-1.

In the 3rd Century CE, Diophantus of Alexandria was the first to recognize
fractions as numbers, and is considered an early innovator in the field of what would later become known as
algebra. He applied himself to some quite complex algebraic problems, including what is now known as
Diophantine Analysis, which deals with finding integer solutions to kinds of problems that lead to equations in
several unknowns (Diophantine equations). Diophantus’ “Arithmetica”, a collection of problems giving
numerical solutions of both determinate and indeterminate equations, was the most prominent work on algebra in
all Greek mathematics, and his problems exercised the minds of many of the world's best mathematicians for
much of the next two millennia.

But Alexandria was not the only centre of learning in the Hellenistic Greek empire. Mention should also be made
of Apollonius of Perga (a city in modern-day southern Turkey) whose late 3rd Century BCE work on geometry

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(and, in particular, on conics and conic sections) was very influential on later European mathematicians. It was
Apollonius who gave the ellipse, the parabola, and the hyperbola the names by which we know them, and showed
how they could be derived from different sections through a cone.

▪ EUCLID

The Greek mathematician Euclid lived and flourished in Alexandria in Egypt around 300 BCE, during the reign
of Ptolemy I. Euclid is often referred to as the “Father of Geometry”, and he wrote perhaps the most important
and successful mathematical textbook of all time, the “Stoicheion” or “Elements”, which represents the
culmination of the mathematical revolution which had taken place in Greece up to that time. He also wrote works
on the division of geometrical figures into into parts in given ratios, on catoptrics (the mathematical theory of
mirrors and reflection), and on spherical astronomy (the determination of the location of objects on the "celestial
sphere"), as well as important texts on optics and music.

The "Elements” was a lucid and comprehensive compilation and explanation of all the known mathematics of his
time, including the work of Pythagoras, Hippocrates, Theudius, Theaetetus and Eudoxus. In all, it contains 465
theorems and proofs, described in a clear, logical and elegant style, and using only a compass and a straight edge.
Euclid reworked the mathematical concepts of his predecessors into a consistent whole, later to become known
as Euclidean geometry, which is still as valid today as it was 2,300 years ago, even in higher mathematics dealing
with higher dimensional spaces.

However, the “Elements” also includes a series of theorems on the properties of numbers and integers, marking
the first real beginnings of number theory. He was the first to realize - and prove - that there are infinitely many
prime numbers. The basis of his proof, often known as Euclid’s Theorem, is that, for any given (finite) set of
primes, if you multiply all of them together and then add one, then a new prime has been added to the set (for
example, 2 x 3 x 5 = 30, and 30 + 1 = 31, a prime number) a process which can be repeated indefinitely. Euclid
also identified the first four “perfect numbers”, numbers that are the sum of all their divisors (excluding the
number itself.

▪ ARCHIMEDES

Another Greek mathematician who studied at Alexandria in the 3rd Century BCE was Archimedes, although he
was born, died and lived most of his life in Syracuse, Sicily (a Hellenic Greek colony in Magna Graecia). Also
an engineer, inventor and astronomer, Archimedes was best known throughout most of history for his military
innovations like his siege engines and mirrors to harness and focus the power of the sun, as well as levers, pulleys
and pumps (including the famous screw pump known as Archimedes’ Screw, which is still used today in some
parts of the world for irrigation). Archimedes produced formulas to calculate the areas of regular shapes, using a
revolutionary method of capturing new shapes by using shapes he already understood.

Archimedes’ most sophisticated use of the method of exhaustion, which remained unsurpassed until the
development of integral calculus in the 17th Century, was his proof - known as the Quadrature of the Parabola
- that the area of a parabolic segment is 4⁄3 that of a certain inscribed triangle. He dissected the area of a parabolic
segment (the region enclosed by a parabola and a line) into infinitely many triangles whose areas form a geometric
progression. He then computed the sum of the resulting geometric series, and proved that this is the area of the
parabolic segment.

The discovery of which Archimedes claimed to be most proud was that of the relationship between a sphere and
a circumscribing cylinder of the same height and diameter. He calculated the volume of a sphere as 4⁄3πr3, and
that of a cylinder of the same height and diameter as 2πr3. The surface area was 4πr2 for the sphere, and 6πr2 for
the cylinder (including its two bases). Therefore, it turns out that the sphere has a volume equal to two-thirds that
of the cylinder, and a surface area also equal to two-thirds that of the cylinder. Archimedes was so pleased with
this result that a sculpted sphere and cylinder were supposed to have been placed on his tomb of at his request.

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▪ DIOPHANTUS

Diophantus was a Hellenistic Greek (or possibly Egyptian, Jewish or even Chaldean) mathematician who lived
in Alexandria during the 3rd Century CE. He is sometimes called “the father of algebra”, and wrote an influential
series of books called the “Arithmetica”, a collection of algebraic problems which greatly influenced the
subsequent development of number theory.

ROMAN MATHEMATICS

By the middle of the 1st Century BCE, the Roman had tightened
their grip on the old Greek and Hellenistic empires, and the
mathematical revolution of the Greeks ground to halt. 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.

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.

MAYAN MATHEMATICS

The Mayan civilisation had settled in the region of Central America from about 2000 BCE, although the so-called
Classic Period stretches from about 250 CE to 900 CE.

The Mayan and other Mesoamerican cultures used a vigesimal

number system based on base 20 (and, to some extent, base 5),
probably originally developed from counting on fingers and
toes. The numerals consisted of only three symbols: zero,
represented as a shell shape; one, a dot; and five, a bar. Thus,
addition and subtraction was a relatively simple matter of adding
up dots and bars. After the number 19, larger numbers were
written in a kind of vertical place value format using powers of
20: 1, 20, 400, 8000, 160000, etc (see image above), although in
their calendar calculations they gave the third position a value of
360 instead of 400 (higher positions revert to multiples of 20).

The pre-classic Maya and their neighbours had independently developed the concept of zero by at least as early
as 36 BCE, and we have evidence of their working with sums up to the hundreds of millions, and with dates so
large it took several lines just to represent them. Despite not possessing the concept of a fraction, they produced
extremely accurate astronomical observations using no instruments other than sticks, and were able to measure
the length of the solar year to a far higher degree of accuracy than that used in Europe (their calculations produced
365.242 days, compared to the modern value of 365.242198), as well as the length of the lunar month (their
estimate was 29.5308 days, compared to the modern value of 29.53059).

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CHINESE MATHEMATICS

The simple but efficient ancient Chinese numbering system,

which dates back to at least the 2nd millennium BCE, used small
bamboo rods arranged to represent the numbers 1 to 9, which
were then places in columns representing units, tens, hundreds,
thousands, etc. It was therefore a decimal place value system,
very similar to the one we use today - indeed it was the first such
number system, adopted by the Chinese over a thousand years
before it was adopted in the West - and it made even quite
complex calculations very quick and easy.

There was a pervasive fascination with numbers and mathematical

patterns in ancient China, and different numbers were believed to have
cosmic significance. In particular, magic squares - squares of numbers
where each row, column and diagonal added up to the same total - were
regarded as having great spiritual and religious significance.

The Lo Shu Square, an order three square where each row, column and
diagonal adds up to 15, is perhaps the earliest of these, dating back to around 650 BCE (the legend of Emperor
Yu’s discovery of the the square on the back of a turtle is set as taking place in about 2800 BCE). But soon, bigger
magic squares were being constructed, with even greater magical and mathematical powers, culminating in the
elaborate magic squares, circles and triangles of Yang Hui in the 13th Century (Yang Hui also produced a
trianglular representation of binomial coefficients identical to the later Pascals’ Triangle, and was perhaps the
first to use decimal fractions in the modern form).

But the main thrust of Chinese mathematics developed in response to the empire’s growing need for
mathematically competent administrators. A textbook called “Jiuzhang Suanshu” or “Nine Chapters on the
Mathematical Art” became an important tool in the education of such a civil service, covering hundreds of
problems in practical areas such as trade, taxation, engineering and the payment of wages.

The Chinese went on to solve far more complex equations using far larger numbers than those outlined in the
“Nine Chapters”, though. They also started to pursue more abstract mathematical problems (although usually
couched in rather artificial practical terms), including what has become known as the Chinese Remainder
Theorem. A technique for solving such problems, initially posed by Sun Tzu in the 3rd Century CE and
considered one of the jewels of mathematics, was being used to measure planetary movements by Chinese
astronomers in the 6th Century AD, and even today it has practical uses, such as in Internet cryptography.

CHINESE MATHEMATICIANS

• Liu Hui - produced a detailed commentary on the “Nine Chapters” in 263 CE, was one of the first
mathematicians known to leave roots unevaluated, giving more exact results instead of approximations.
By an approximation using a regular polygon with 192 sides, he also formulated an algorithm which
calculated the value of π as 3.14159 (correct to five decimal places), as well as developing a very early
forms of both integral and differential calculus.
• Qin Jiushao - a rather violent and corrupt imperial administrator and warrior, who explored solutions to
quadratic and even cubic equations using a method of repeated approximations very similar to that later
devised in the West by Sir Isaac Newton in the 17th Century.

INDIAN MATHEMATICS

Like the Chinese, the Indians early discovered the benefits of a decimal number system. They refined and
perfected the system, particularly the written representation of the numerals, creating the ancestors of the nine

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numerals that we use across the world today. The earliest recorded usage of a circle character for the number zero
is usually attributed to a 9th Century engraving in a temple in Gwalior in central India.

Golden Age Indian mathematicians made fundamental advances in the theory of trigonometry. Indian astronomers
used trigonometry to calculate the relative distances between the Earth and the Moon and the Earth and the Sun.

BRAHMAGUPTA

• “Brahmasphutasiddhanta” is probably the earliest known text to treat zero as a number in its own right.
• Established the basic mathematical rules for dealing with zero.
• Realized that there could be such a thing as a negative number, which he referred to as “debt”.
• He pointed out, quadratic equations (of the type x² + 2 = 11, for example) could in theory have two possible
solutions, one of which could be negative, because 3² = 9 and -3² = 9.
• He established √10 (3.162277) as a good practical approximation for π (3.141593), and gave a formula,
now known as Brahmagupta's Formula.

MADHAVA

• He realized that, by successively adding and subtracting different odd number fractions to infinity, he
could home in on an exact formula for π
• He discovered a procedure to determine the positions of the Moon every 36 minutes, and methods to
estimate the motions of the planets.

ISLAM MATHEMATICS

The Islamic Empire established across Persia, the Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa, Iberia and parts of
India from the 8th Century onwards made significant contributions towards mathematics. Extensive use of
complex geometric patterns to decorate their buildings, raising mathematics to the form of an art.

The Qur'an itself encouraged the accumulation of knowledge, and a Golden Age of Islamic science and
mathematics flourished throughout the medieval period from the 9th to 15th century.

The House of Wisdom was set up in Baghdad around 810, and work started almost immediately on translating
the major Greek and Indian mathematical and astronomy works into Arabic.

Muhammad Al-Khwarizmi (c.780-850 CE)

• Persian mathematician
• An early Director of the House of Wisdom
• One of the greatest of early Muslim mathematicians.

ALGEBRA

Al-Khwarizmi’s other important contribution

• A word derived from the title of a mathematical text he published called “Al-Kitab al-mukhtasar fi hisab
al-jabr wa'l-muqabala” (“The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Bcontributio
• Al-Khwarizmi wanted to go from the specific problems considered by the Indians and Chinese to a more
general way of analyzing problems, and in doing so he created an abstract mathematical language which
is used across the world today.
• His book is considered the foundational text of modern algebra, although he did not employ the kind of
algebraic notation used today (he used words to explain the problem, and diagrams to solve it).

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The book provided and introduced for the first time the fundamental algebraic methods of: reduction, completion
and balancing.

Muhammad Al-Karaji

• The 10th Century Persian mathematician

• Worked to extend algebra still further, freeing it from its geometrical heritage, and introduced the theory
of algebraic calculus.
• First to use the method of proof by mathematical induction to prove his results.
• Used mathematical induction to prove the binomial theorem.

A binomial is a simple type of algebraic expression which has just two terms which are operated on only by
addition, subtraction, multiplication and positive whole-number exponents, such as (x + y)2. The co-efficient
needed when a binomial is expanded form a symmetrical triangle, usually referred to as Pascal’s Triangle

Nasir Al-Din Al-Tusi

• 13th Century Persian astronomer, scientist and mathematician

• Perhaps the first to treat trigonometry as a separate mathematical discipline, distinct from astronomy
• He gave the first extensive exposition of spherical trigonometry, including listing the six distinct cases of
a right triangle in spherical trigonometry.
• One of his major mathematical contributions was the formulation of the famous law of sines for plane
triangles, a⁄(sin A) = b⁄(sin B) = c⁄(sin C)

MEDIEVAL MATHEMATICS

Europe’s first great medieval mathematician was the Italian Leonardo of Pisa, better known by his
nickname Fibonacci. Fibonacci is best known, though, for his introduction into Europe of a particular number
sequence, which has since become known as Fibonacci Numbers or the Fibonacci Sequence. He discovered the
sequence - the first recursive number sequence known in Europe - while considering a practical problem in the
“Liber Abaci” involving the growth of a hypothetical population of rabbits based on idealized assumptions. He
noted that, after each monthly generation, the number of pairs of rabbits increased from 1 to 2 to 3 to 5 to 8 to 13,
etc, and identified how the sequence progressed by adding the previous two terms (in mathematical terms, Fn =
Fn-1 + Fn-2), a sequence which could in theory extend indefinitely.

The sequence, which had actually been known to Indian mathematicians since the 6th Century, has many
interesting mathematical properties, and many of the implications and relationships of the sequence were not
discovered until several centuries after Fibonacci's death. The numbers of the sequence has also been found to be
ubiquitous in nature: among other things, many species of flowering plants have numbers of petals in the
Fibonacci Sequence.

An important (but largely unknown and underrated) mathematician and scholar of the 14th Century was the
Frenchman Nicole Oresme. He used a system of rectangular coordinates centuries before his countryman René
Descartes popularized the idea, as well as perhaps the first time-speed-distance graph. Also, leading from his
research into musicology, he was the first to use fractional exponents, and also worked on infinite series, being
the first to prove that the harmonic series 1⁄1 + 1⁄2 + 1⁄3 + 1⁄4 + 1⁄5... is a divergent infinite series (i.e. not tending to
a limit, other than infinity).

The German scholar Regiomontatus was perhaps the most capable mathematician of the 15th Century, his main
contribution to mathematics being in the area of trigonometry. He helped separate trigonometry from astronomy,
and it was largely through his efforts that trigonometry came to be considered an independent branch of
mathematics. His book "De Triangulis", in which he described much of the basic trigonometric knowledge which
is now taught in high school and college, was the first great book on trigonometry to appear in print.
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Mention should also be made of Nicholas of Cusa (or Nicolaus Cusanus), a 15th Century German philosopher,
mathematician and astronomer, whose prescient ideas on the infinite and the infinitesimal directly influenced later
mathematicians like Gottfried Leibniz and Georg Cantor. He also held some distinctly non-standard intuitive
ideas about the universe and the Earth's position in it, and about the elliptical orbits of the planets and relative
motion, which foreshadowed the later discoveries of Copernicus and Kepler.

16TH CENTURY MATHEMATICS

The cultural, intellectual and artistic movement of the Renaissance, which saw a resurgence of learning based on
classical sources, began in Italy around the 14th Century, and gradually spread across most of Europe over the
next two centuries. It is a tribute to the respect in which mathematics was held in Renaissance Europe that the
famed German artist Albrecht Dürer included an order-4 magic square in his engraving "Melencolia I". In fact,
it is a so-called "supermagic square" with many more lines of addition symmetry than a regular 4 x 4 magic
square (see image at right). The year of the work, 1514, is shown in the two bottom central squares.

An important figure in the late 15th and early 16th Centuries is an Italian Franciscan friar called Luca Pacioli,
who published a book on arithmetic, geometry and book-keeping at the end of the 15th Century which became
quite popular for the mathematical puzzles it contained. It also introduced symbols for plus and minus for the
first time in a printed book (although this is also sometimes attributed to Giel Vander Hoecke, Johannes Widmann
and others), symbols that were to become standard notation.

During the 16th and early 17th Century, the equals, multiplication, division, radical (root), decimal and
inequality symbols were gradually introduced and standardized. The use of decimal fractions and decimal
arithmetic is usually attributed to the Flemish mathematician Simon Stevin the late 16th Century, although the
decimal point notation was not popularized until early in the 17th Century.

In the Renaissance Italy of the early 16th Century, Bologna University in particular was famed for its intense
public mathematics competitions. It was in just such a competion that the unlikely figure of the young, self-
taught Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia revealed to the world the formula for solving first one type, and later all types,
of cubic equations (equations with terms including x3).

Building on Tartaglia’s work, another young Italian, Lodovico Ferrari, soon devised a similar method to solve
quartic equations (equations with terms including x4) and both solutions were published by Gerolamo Cardano.

With Hindu-Arabic numerals, standardized notation and the new language of algebra at their disposal, the stage
was set for the European mathematical revolution of the 17th Century.

▪ TARTAGLIA, CARDANO & FERRARI

In the Renaissance Italy of the early 16th Century, Bologna University in particular was famed for its intense
public mathematics competitions. It was in just such a competition, in 1535, that the unlikely figure of the young
Venetian Tartaglia first revealed a mathematical finding hitherto considered impossible, and which had stumped
the best mathematicians of China, India and the Islamic world.

Niccolò Fontana became known as Tartaglia (meaning “the stammerer”) for a speech defect he suffered due to
an injury he received in a battle against the invading French army. He was a poor engineer known for designing
fortifications, a surveyor of topography (seeking the best means of defence or offence in battles) and a bookkeeper
in the Republic of Venice. But he was also a self-taught, but wildly ambitious, mathematician.

Tartaglia's greates legacy to mathematical history, though, occurred when he won the 1535 Bologna University
mathematics competition by demonstrating a general algebraic formula for solving cubic equations (equations
with terms including x3), something which had come to be seen by this time as an impossibility, requiring as it
does an understanding of the square roots of negative numbers. In the competition, he beat Scipione del Ferro
(or at least del Ferro's assistant, Fior), who had coincidentally produced his own partial solution to the cubic
equation problem not long before. Although del Ferro's solution perhaps predated Tartaglia’s, it was much more

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limited, and Tartaglia is usually credited with the first general solution. In the highly competitive and cut-throat
environment of 16th Century Italy, Tartaglia even encoded his solution in the form of a poem in an attempt to
make it more difficult for other mathematicians to steal it.

Tartaglia’s definitive method was, however, leaked to Gerolamo Cardano (or Cardan), a rather eccentric and
confrontational mathematician, doctor and Renaissance man, and author throughout his lifetime of some 131
books. Cardano published it himself in his 1545 book "Ars Magna" (despite having promised Tartaglia that he
would not), along with the work of his own brilliant student Lodovico Ferrari. Ferrari, on seeing Tartaglia's
cubic solution, had realized that he could use a similar method to solve quartic equations (equations with terms
including x4).

Ferrari eventually came to understand cubic and quartic equations much better than Tartaglia. When Ferrari
challenged Tartaglia to another public debate, Tartaglia initially accepted, but then (perhaps wisely) decided not
to show up, and Ferrari won by default. Tartaglia was thoroughly discredited and became effectively
unemployable. Poor Tartaglia died penniless and unknown, despite having produced (in addition to his cubic
equation solution) the first translation of Euclid’s “Elements” in a modern European language, formulated
Tartaglia's Formula for the volume of a tetrahedron, devised a method to obtain binomial coefficients called
Tartaglia's Triangle (an earlier version of Pascal's Triangle), and become the first to apply mathematics to the
investigation of the paths of cannonballs (work which was later validated by Galileo's studies on falling bodies).
Even today, the solution to cubic equations is usually known as Cardano’s Formula and not Tartgalia’s.

Ferrari, on the other hand, obtained a prestigious teaching post while still in his teens after Cardano resigned from
it and recommended him, and was eventually able to retired young and quite rich, despite having started out as
Cardano’s servant.

Cardano himself, an accomplished gambler and chess player, wrote a book called "Liber de ludo aleae" ("Book
on Games of Chance") when he was just 25 years old, which contains perhaps the first systematic treatment of
probability (as well as a section on effective cheating methods). The ancient Greeks, Romans and Indians had all
been inveterate gamblers, but none of them had ever attempted to understand randomness as being governed by
mathematical laws. Cardano was also the first to describe hypocycloids, the pointed plane curves generated by
the trace of a fixed point on a small circle that rolls within a larger circle, and the generating circles were later
named Cardano (or Cardanic) circles. The colourful Cardano remained notoriously short of money thoughout
his life, largely due to his gambling habits, and was accused of heresy in 1570 after publishing a horoscope of
Jesus (apparently, his own son contributed to the prosecution, bribed by Tartaglia).

17th CENTURY MATHEMATICS

RENÉ DESCARTES (1596-1650)

• René Descartes has been dubbed the "Father of Modern Philosophy", but he was also one of the key figures
in the Scientific Revolution of the 17th Century, and is sometimes considered the first of the modern
school of mathematics.
• In 1637, he published his ground-breaking philosophical and mathematical treatise "Discours de la
méthode" (the “Discourse on Method”), and one of its appendices in particular, "La Géométrie", is now
considered a landmark in the history of mathematics.
• It was in "La Géométrie" that Descartes first proposed that each point in two dimensions can be described
by two numbers on a plane, one giving the point’s horizontal location and the other the vertical location,
which have come to be known as Cartesian coordinates. He used perpendicular lines (or axes), crossing
at a point called the origin, to measure the horizontal (x) and vertical (y) locations, both positive and
negative, thus effectively dividing the plane up into four quadrants.

PIERRE DE FERMAT (1607-1665)

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• French mathematician who is often called the founder of the modern theory of numbers.
• Fermat discovered the fundamental principle of analytic geometry. His methods for finding tangents to
curves and their maximum and minimum points led him to be regarded as the inventor of the differential
calculus.
• Through his correspondence with Blaise Pascal he was a co-founder of the theory of probability. Fermat's
mathematical work was communicated mainly in letters to friends, often with little or no proof of his
theorems. Although he himself claimed to have proved all his arithmetic theorems, few records of his
proofs have survived, and many mathematicians have doubted some of his claims, especially given the
difficulty of some of the problems and the limited mathematical tools available to Fermat.
• One example of his many theorems is the Two Square Theorem, which shows that any prime number
which, when divided by 4, leaves a remainder of 1 (4n + 1)
• While investigating a technique for finding the centres of gravity of various plane and solid figures, he
developed a method for determining maxima, minima and tangents to various curves that was essentially
equivalent to differentiation. Also, using an ingenious trick, he was able to reduce the integral of general
power functions to the sums of geometric series.

BLAISE PASCAL (1623-1662)

• Much of his early work was in the area of natural and applied sciences, and he has a physical law named
after him (that “pressure exerted anywhere in a confined liquid is transmitted equally and undiminished
in all directions throughout the liquid”), as well as the international unit for the measurement of pressure.
• At the age of sixteen, he wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry, known as
Pascal's Theorem, which states that, if a hexagon is inscribed in a circle, then the three intersection points
of opposite sides lie on a single line, called the Pascal line.
• As a young man, he built a functional calculating machine, able to perform additions and subtractions, to
help his father with his tax calculations. Pascal's calculator (also known as the arithmetic machine or
Pascaline) is a mechanical calculator invented by Blaise Pascal in the early 17th century. Pascal was led
to develop a calculator by the laborious arithmetical calculations required by his father's work as the
supervisor of taxes in Rouen.
• He is best known, however, for Pascal’s Triangle, a convenient tabular presentation of binomial co-
efficient, where each number is the sum of the two numbers directly above it. A binomial is a simple type
of algebraic expression which has just two terms operated on only by addition, subtraction, multiplication
and positive whole-number exponents, such as (x + y) ^2.

ISAAC NEWTON (1642-1727)

• His theory of calculus built on earlier work by his fellow Englishmen John Wallis and Isaac Barrow, as
well as on work of such Continental mathematicians as René Descartes, Pierre de Fermat, Bonaventura
Cavalieri, Johann van Waveren Hudde and Gilles Personne de Roberval.
• Unlike the static geometry of the Greeks, calculus allowed mathematicians and engineers to make sense
of the motion and dynamic change in the changing world around us, such as the orbits of planets, the
motion of fluids.
• Newton’s work in calculus initially started as a way to find the slope at any point on a curve whose slope
was constantly varying (the slope of a tangent line to the curve at any point). He calculated the derivative
in order to find the slope. He called this the “method of fluxions” rather than differentiation. That is
because he termed “fluxion” as the instantaneous rate of change at a point on the curve and “fluents” as
the changing values of x and y. He then established that the opposite of differentiation is integration, which
he called the “method of fluents”. This allowed him to create the First Fundamental Theorem of Calculus,
which states that if a function is integrated and then differentiated the original function can be obtained
because differentiation and integration are inverse functions.
• Newton not only discovered calculus but he is also credited for the discovery of the generalized binomial
theorem. This theorem describes the algebraic expansion of powers of a binomial. He also contributed to
the theory of finite differences, he used fractional exponents and coordinate geometry to get solutions to

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Diophantine equations, he developed a method for finding better approximation to the zeroes or roots of
a function, and he was the first to use infinite power series.

18th CENTURY MATHEMATICS

LEONHARD EULER (1707-1783)

• Mathematical notation

Euler introduced and popularized several notational conventions through his numerous and widely
circulated textbooks. Most notably, he introduced the concept of a function and was the first to write f(x) to
denote the function f applied to the argument x. He also introduced the modern notation for the trigonometric
functions, the letter e for the base of the natural logarithm (now also known as Euler's number), the Greek
letter Σ for summations and the letter i to denote the imaginary unit. The use of the Greek letter π to denote
the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter was also popularized by Euler, although it originated
with Welsh mathematician William Jones.

• Graph Theory

In 1735, Euler presented a solution to the problem known as the Seven Bridges of Königsberg. The
city of Königsberg, Prussia was set on the Pregel River, and included two large islands that were connected
to each other and the mainland by seven bridges. The problem is to decide whether it is possible to follow a
path that crosses each bridge exactly once and returns to the starting point. It is not possible: there is no
Eulerian circuit. This solution is considered to be the first theorem of graph theory, specifically of planar
graph theory.

Euler also discovered the formula V-E+F=2 relating the number of vertices, edges and faces of a
convex polyhedron, and hence of a planar graph. The constant in this formula is now known as the Euler
characteristic for the graph (or another mathematical object), and is related to the genus of the object. The
study and generalization of this formula, specifically by Cauchy and L'Huilier, is at the origin of topology.

JOHANN AND JACOB BERNOULLI (BERNOULLI BROTHERS)

• One well known and topical problem of the day to which they applied themselves was that of designing a
sloping ramp which would allow a ball to roll from the top to the bottom in the fastest possible time.
Johann Bernoulli demonstrated through calculus that neither a straight ramp nor a curved ramp with a very
steep initial slope were optimal, but actually a less steep curved ramp known as a brachistochrone curve
(a kind of upside-down cycloid, similar to the path followed by a point on a moving bicycle wheel) is the
curve of fastest descent.
• This application was an example of the “calculus of variations”, a generalization of infinitesimal calculus
that the Bernoulli brothers developed together, and has since proved useful in fields as diverse as
engineering, financial investment, architecture and construction, and even space travel. Johann also
derived the equation for a catenary curve, such as that formed by a chain hanging between two posts, a
problem presented to him by his brother Jacob.

19TH CENTURY MATHEMATICS

Most of the powerful abstract mathematical theories in use today originated in the 19th century. Both
France and Germany were caught up in the age of revolution which swept Europe in the late 18th Century,
but the two countries treated mathematics quite differently.

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• France
- After the French Revolution, mathematics was given a prominent role, emphasized by Napoleon
- Use of math in military ambitions
- Mathematics should serve the scientific and technical needs of the state

• Germany
- Supported pure mathematics or detached from demands of state and military
- Under influence of Wilhelm von Humboldt

ÉVARISTE GALOIS

- A French republican that died in a duel at the young age of 20, but the work he published shortly
before his death made his name in mathematical circles
- He realized that the algebraic solution to a polynomial equation is related to the structure of a group
of permutations associated with the roots of the polynomial, the Galois group of the polynomial.
- Proved in the late 1820s that there is no general algebraic method for solving polynomial equations of
any degree greater than four, going further than the Norwegian Niels Henrik Abel
- Galois founded abstract algebra and group theory, which are fundamental to computer science,
physics, coding theory and cryptography.

CARL FRIEDRICH GAUSS

- Sometimes called as the “Prince of Mathematics” and “Greatest

Mathematician since Antiquity”
- At the age of 7, he is reported to have amazed his teachers by summing
the integers from 1 to 100 almost instantly
- He is widely regarded as one of the three greatest mathematicians of all
times, along with Archimedes and Newton.
- Gauss’s first significant discovery, in 1792, was that a regular polygon
of 17 sides can be constructed by ruler and compass alone.

JANOS BOLYAI & NIKOLAI LOBACHEVSKY

- Bolyai is a Hungarian mathematician who became obsessed of

Euclid’s fifth postulate or the parallel postulate to such an
extent that his father warned him that it may take up all his time
and deprive him of his "health, peace of mind and happiness in
life"

o Fifth Postulate - If a straight line falling on two straight

lines make the interior angles on the same side less than
two right angles, the two straight lines, if produced
indefinitely, meet on that side on which are the angles less
than the two right angles.

- Bolyai published his theories concerning Euclid’s troublesome

“Fifth postulate” as an Appendix, “The Science of Absolute
Space: Independent of the Truth or Falsity of Euclid’s Axiom
XI

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- Bolyai and Lobachevsky had laid the foundation of non-Euclidean geometry — a wholly novel way
of apprehending space and without it, Einstein couldn’t have revolutionized our understanding of the
universe with his notion of spacetime

- Lobachevsky is a Russian mathematician who had been working to develop a geometry in which
Euclid’s fifth postulate did not apply

- Lobachevsky gave the first public exposition of the ideas of non-Euclidean geometry in his paper “On
the principles of geometry.”

BERNHARD RIEMANN

- German Mathematician who developed a type of non-

Euclidean geometry, different to the hyperbolic geometry of
Bolyai and Lobachevsky, which has come to be known as
elliptic geometry.

- He went on to develop Riemannian geometry, which unified

and vastly generalized the three types of geometry, as well as
the concept of a manifold or mathematical space, which
generalized the ideas of curves and surfaces

GEORGE BOOLE

- Boole came to see logic as principally a discipline of

mathematics, rather than of philosophy.

- Determined to find a way to encode logical arguments into a

language that could be manipulated and solved
mathematically, he came up Boolean algebra.

o Boolean Algebra - The three most basic operations of

this algebra were AND, OR and NOT, which Boole saw
as the only operations necessary to perform comparisons
of sets of things, as well as basic mathematical functions.

GEORG CANTOR

- A Russian mathematician professor who developed the

set theory which led him to the conclusion that there are
infinities of different sizes.

- Cantor's starting point was to say that, if it was possible

to add 1 and 1, then it ought to be possible to add infinity
and infinity.

- He realized that it was actually possible to add and

subtract infinities, and that beyond what was normally thought of as infinity existed another, larger
infinity, and then other infinities beyond that

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- He showed that there may be infinitely many sets of infinite numbers - an infinity of infinities - some
bigger than others

HENRI POINCARE

- Referred to as the “Last Universalist” as he was the last

to adhere to an older conception of mathematics
- He was challenged in describing the shape of 3-
dimensional universe but later on came up with the
famous Poincaré conjecture
o Poincare Conjecture - It asserts that, if a loop in
that space can be continuously tightened to a point,
in the same way as a loop drawn on a 2-
dimensional sphere can, then the space is just a
three-dimensional sphere.

MATHEMATICS IN 20th CENTURY

DAVID HILBERT

• A German mathematician who was one of the most influential and universal mathematician of 20th
century.
• He discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental ideas in many areas, including invariant
theory, the calculus of variations, commutative algebra, algebraic number theory, the foundations of
geometry, spectral theory of operators and its application to integral equations, mathematical physics, and
foundations of mathematics (particularly proof theory).
• Has many mathematical terms named after him, including Hilbert space (an infinite dimensional Euclidean
space), Hilbert curves, the Hilbert classification and the Hilbert inequality, as well as several theorems.
• He enunciated a list of 23 research problems in 1900 at the International Mathematical Congress in Paris
where he surveyed nearly all the mathematics of his day and endeavored to set forth the problems he
thought would be significant for mathematicians in the 20th century.
• He was unfailingly optimistic about the future of Mathematics, never doubting that his 23 problems would
soon be solved and believing that there are absolute no unsolvable problems.

KURT GÖDEL

• An Austrian mathematician who was one of the most significant logicians in history and had an immense
effect upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the 20th century.
• He proved that within a formal system questions exist that are neither provable nor disprovable on the
basis of the axioms that define the system. This is known as Godel's Undecidability. Theorem.
• He also showed that in a sufficiently rich formal system in which decidability of all questions is required,
there will be contradictory statements. This is known as his Incompleteness Theorem.
• He showed that there are problems that cannot be solved by any set of rules or procedures; instead for
these problems one must always extend the set of axioms.

ALAN TURING

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• A British mathematician who has since been acknowledged as one the most innovative and powerful
thinkers of the 20th century.
• He is also widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence.
• He provided a constructive interpretation of Godel's results by placing them on an algorithmic foundation:
There are numbers and functions that cannot be computed by any logical machine.
• He invented Turing machine, a theoretical computing machine, to serve as an idealized model for
mathematical calculation.

ANDRÉ WEIL

• A French mathematician who was one of the most influential figures in mathematics during the 20th
century.
• He made substantial contributions in many areas of mathematics, and was particularly animated by the
idea of discovering profound connections between algebraic geometry and number theory.
• He was a founding member, and de facto the early leader, of the influential Bourbaki group of French
mathematicians.

PAUL COHEN

• An American mathematician who was best known for his proofs that the continuum hypothesis and
the axiom of choice are independent from Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory.
• He awarded the Fields Medal in 1966 for his proof of the independence of the Continuum
Hypothesis from the other axioms of set theory.
• He is also known for working on the mathematical technique which is mostly called ‘forcing’.

JULIA ROBINSON

• An American mathematician who was one of the two most important logicians of the 20th century.
• She was the first woman to be elected to the mathematical section of the National Academy of Sciences,
as well as the first woman to be president of the American Mathematical Society.
• She had many important contributions to questions of algorithmic solvability and unsolvability of
mathematical problems, in particular for her part in the negative solution of Hilbert's "Tenth Problem."

YURI MATIYASEVICH

• A Russian mathematician who was best known for his negative solution of Hilbert's tenth
problem (Matiyasevich's theorem), which was presented in his doctoral thesis at LOMI (the Leningrad
Department of the Steklov Institute of Mathematics).
• He freely acknowledged his debt to Robinson’s work, and the two went on to work together on other
problems until Robinson’s death in 1984.

G.H. HARDY

• An English mathematician known for his achievements in number theory and mathematical analysis.
• Hardy himself was a prodigy from a young age.
• His greatest service to mathematics in this early period was A course of pure mathematics, published in
1908.
• He was the mentor of the Indian mathematician genius, Srinivasa Ramanujan.

SRINAVASA RAMANUJAN

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• An Indian mathematician who was one of India's greatest mathematical geniuses.

• Though he had almost no formal training in pure mathematics, he made substantial contributions
to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions, including solutions to
mathematical problems then considered unsolvable.
• He seeks mathematician who could better understand his work.
• He conjectured or proved over 3,000 theorems, identities and equations, including properties of highly
composite numbers, the partition function and its asymptotics and mock theta functions.
• “the one romantic incident in my life”

BERTRAND RUSSELL

• A British mathematician and with his contributions to logic, epistemology, and the philosophy of
mathematics established him as one of the foremost philosophers of the 20th century.
• He conceived the idea of demonstrating that mathematics not only had logically rigorous foundations but
also that it was in its entirety nothing but logic.

ALFRED WHITEHEAD

• A British mathematician and philosopher best known for his work in mathematical logic and the
philosophy of science.
• He collaborated with his more celebrated ex-student, Bertrand Russel, in the first decade of the 20th
Century on their monumental work, the “Principia Mathematica”.
• Beginning in the late 1910s and early 1920s, Whitehead gradually turned his attention from mathematics
to philosophy of science, and finally to metaphysics.

Sources:

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https://www.storyofmathematics.com/index.html

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https://www.britannica.com/biography/David-Hilbert

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https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/obituaries/alan-turing-overlooked.amp.html

https://www.newscientist.com/people/alan-turing/

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https://www.nap.edu/read/4560/chapter/21#453

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https://www.storyofmathematics.com/18th.html

https://www.storyofmathematics.com/17th.html

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HISTORY OF
MATHEMATICS
SUBMITTED BY;

GROUP 1

Calaguing, Hazel Ann Marie

De Guzman, MaryJoy

Fortunado, Sennheiser

Jaca, Lyka Mia

Labay, Mary Aubrey

Mangune, Egej Mari

Navidad, Muellane

San Agustin, Loren

BSA 1-15

SUBMITTED TO;
PROF. ZENAIDA A. AGCAOILI

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