Tell about history of Mathematics ?

Indeed, it’s longer than most, since the first writing is believed to be numerica

It’s also multicultural, with its historical origins in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

The history of mathematics also involves particular individuals who are part of our world culture.

Perhaps more school children would be interested in maths if it were taught more from a historical point of view.

For example, how often do they learn that quadratic equations have been solved for 4000 years, having their origins in clay tablets discovered in what is now Iraq, an area that features in our daily newspapers?

There have been several biographies of Euler

Some have concentrated on his life without attempting to come to grips with his mathematical contributions.

Others, written mainly for mathematics students, have been more mathematical in nature and don’t give a thorough or accurate idea of his life

Ron Calinger’s substantial book of over 650 pages aims to introduce the reader to both aspects, and is full of useful and interesting material.

For some time I’ve been working on a much shorter book about Euler, designed to present both the biography and the mathematics to an interested general public.

Calinger’s book is a most useful reference work for this purpose, and I certainly recommend it as the book on Euler for anyone interested in finding out more about this fascinating mathematician.

I once attended a lecture by Dirk Struik, delivered with great clarity and without notes

a remarkable performance, given that the speaker was then 104 years old!

Although there are many fine books on the history of mathematics, such as the excellent texts of Victor Katz (‘History of Mathematics:

I’ve always had a soft spot for Struik’s down-to-earth and straightforward paperback, which first appeared in 1948 and which I regard as a classic.

when I once taught a history of mathematics course in the USA, I was both surprised and delighted when some students declared that they preferred it

to the fuller and more up-to-date treatments of the subject to be found in more recent works.

The history of mathematics can be studied and taught in different ways. In the past many people took the traditional ‘who-did-what-and-when?

approach, but more recently there’s been an increased emphasis on putting mathematics into the context of the time

Many courses on the history of mathematics describe what mathematical results have been discovered, but the student has little chance to explore these discoveries ‘from the inside’.

A good source book provides a wide range of original sources (usually in translation and edited as necessary) which enable us to see the problems solved in the context of their time.

Let me give you a couple of examples. First, the origin of quadratic equations.

It’s all very well to say that a Mesopotamian (Babylonian) clay tablet 4000 years ago ‘solved these equations’ (a statement that’s regularly heard),

but until students work through the statements of the problems and the details of the calculations on the tablet,

they don’t really understand exactly what problems were being solved, and why, and what form the solution took.