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Would students take a stronger interest in math if they knew that an ancient African bone (from 20,000 B.C.) might be one of the world’s oldest known counting tools? Or that the work of Muslim ...

In order to better understand capitalism, Karl Marx taught himself parts of algebra and calculus. Nevertheless, he was not a mathematical genius. The historian of science and mathematician Annette ...

Like many of the cultures it studies, the Department of History of Mathematics has had innovative leaders, a golden era and, inevitably, a fall from glory. This year could witness the end of a ...

In 1843, William Rowan Hamilton had a four-dimensional flash of insight that still shapes our three-dimensional world. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

A tablet that dates back some 3700 years has been found to be the oldest example of applied geometry in the history of mathematics. Australian mathematician Dr. Daniel Mansfield from UNSW Science's ...

For sheer brilliance, it was hard to beat John von Neumann. An architect of the modern computer and inventor of game theory, von Neumann was legendary, above all, for his lightning-fast mental ...

THE book before us is Part 1 of a history which is intended to consist of three parts. This first part deals only with the history of the numeral notation and of arithmetic; the second will be devoted ...

Adapted fromInfinitesimal: How a Dangerous Mathematical Theory Shaped the Modern World, by Amir Alexander, by arrangement with Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and ...

One of the biggest mathematical achievements in human history has to do with the origin of nothing—or zero, to be more specific. Researchers at the University of Oxford's Bodleian Library recently ...