Enables teachers to learn the history of mathematics and then incorporate it in undergraduate teaching.

This little book is conceived as a service to mathematicians attending the 1998 International Congress of Mathematicians in Berlin. It presents a comprehensive, condensed overview of mathematical activity in Berlin, from Leibniz almost to the present day (without, however, including biographies of living mathematicians). Since many towering figures in mathematical history worked in Berlin, most of the chapters of this book are concise biographies. These are held together by a few survey articles presenting the overall development of entire periods of scientific life at Berlin. Overlaps between various chapters and differences in style between the chap ters were inevitable, but sometimes this provided opportunities to show different aspects of a single historical event - for instance, the Kronecker-Weierstrass con troversy. The book aims at readability rather than scholarly completeness. There are no footnotes, only references to the individual bibliographies of each chapter. Still, we do hope that the texts brought together here, and written by the various authors for this volume, constitute a solid introduction to the history of Berlin mathematics.

Covering a span of almost 4000 years, from the ancient Babylonians to the eighteenth century, this collection chronicles the enormous changes in mathematical thinking over this time as viewed by distinguished historians of mathematics from the past and the present. Each of the four sections of the book (Ancient Mathematics, Medieval and Renaissance Mathematics, The Seventeenth Century, The Eighteenth Century) is preceded by a Foreword, in which the articles are put into historical context, and followed by an Afterword, in which they are reviewed in the light of current historical scholarship. In more than one case, two articles on the same topic are included to show how knowledge and views about the topic changed over the years. This book will be enjoyed by anyone interested in mathematics and its history - and, in particular, by mathematics teachers at secondary, college, and university levels.

Classroom resource material allowing the integration of mathematics history into undergraduate mathematics teaching.

This volume brings together a number of leading scholars working in the field of ancient Greek mathematics to present their latest research. In their respective area of specialization, all contributors offer stimulating approaches to questions of historical and historiographical ‘revolutions’ and ‘continuity’. Taken together, they provide a powerful lens for evaluating the applicability of Thomas Kuhn’s ideas on ‘scientific revolutions’ to the discipline of ancient Greek mathematics. Besides the latest historiographical studies on ‘geometrical algebra’ and ‘premodern algebra’, the reader will find here some papers which offer new insights into the controversial relationship between Greek and pre-Hellenic mathematical practices. Some other contributions place emphasis on the other edge of the historical spectrum, by exploring historical lines of ‘continuity’ between ancient Greek, Byzantine and post-Hellenic mathematics. The terminology employed by Greek mathematicians, along with various non-textual and material elements, is another topic which some of the essays in the volume explore. Finally, the last three articles focus on a traditionally rich source on ancient Greek mathematics; namely the works of Plato and Aristotle.

Mathematics Across Cultures: A History of Non-Western Mathematics consists of essays dealing with the mathematical knowledge and beliefs of cultures outside the United States and Europe. In addition to articles surveying Islamic, Chinese, Native American, Aboriginal Australian, Inca, Egyptian, and African mathematics, among others, the book includes essays on Rationality, Logic and Mathematics, and the transfer of knowledge from East to West. The essays address the connections between science and culture and relate the mathematical practices to the cultures which produced them. Each essay is well illustrated and contains an extensive bibliography. Because the geographic range is global, the book fills a gap in both the history of science and in cultural studies. It should find a place on the bookshelves of advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars, as well as in libraries serving those groups.

This book addresses the historiography of mathematics as it was practiced during the 19th and 20th centuries by paying special attention to the cultural contexts in which the history of mathematics was written. In the 19th century, the history of mathematics was recorded by a diverse range of people trained in various fields and driven by different motivations and aims. These backgrounds often shaped not only their writing on the history of mathematics, but, in some instances, were also influential in their subsequent reception. During the period from roughly 1880-1940, mathematics modernized in important ways, with regard to its content, its conditions for cultivation, and its identity; and the writing of the history of mathematics played into the last part in particular. Parallel to the modernization of mathematics, the history of mathematics gradually evolved into a field of research with its own journals, societies and academic positions. Reflecting both a new professional identity and changes in its primary audience, various shifts of perspective in the way the history of mathematics was and is written can still be observed to this day. Initially concentrating on major internal, universal developments in certain sub-disciplines of mathematics, the field gradually gravitated towards a focus on contexts of knowledge production involving individuals, local practices, problems, communities, and networks. The goal of this book is to link these disciplinary and methodological changes in the history of mathematics to the broader cultural contexts of its practitioners, namely the historians of mathematics during the period in question.