The abacus turned calculation into a visible, tactile practice, helping ancient and modern users organize number beyond...
Mathematics
Mathematics developed as people sought reliable ways to measure and explain the world. Explore the discoveries and intellectual traditions that expanded mathematical knowledge across cultures.
Logarithms and slide rules transformed calculation into fast, physical reasoning, helping engineers and scientists think with speed,...
Mesopotamians knew the theorem probably a full millennium earlier. By Dr. Jesús Pedro Zamora BonillaProfessor of Philosophy...
Laying the groundwork for the explosion of mathematical knowledge. By Dr. Victor Joseph KatzProfessor of Mathematics EmeritusUniversity...
They needed to reform their education system to keep up with Western rivals. By Dr. Irem Aslan...
André Weil was a mathematician. His sister Simone Weil was a philosopher. By Dr. Scott TaylorProfessor of...
The earliest known writing for record keeping emerged from a system of accounting that used small clay...
The calculation of π was revolutionized by the development of infinite series techniques in the 16th and...
The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus dates to the Second Intermediate Period of ancient Egypt. Introduction The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus (RMP;...
A look at the history of calculating the actual, and increasingly exact, value of pi (Ï€). By...
Euler is held to be one of the greatest mathematicians in history and the greatest of the...
Pi has spawned its own literary style. By Dr. Ittay WeissSenior Lecturer in MathematicsUniversity of Portsmouth Introduction...
The cube continues to be a global sensation. What’s the secret? By Hope ReeseScience Journalist In the...
Do you ever find yourself looking at Roman numerals and wondering how it all works? Have you...
Geometry is a popular branch of mathematics that is often studied in college. This field of math...
The story of two Renaissance mathematicians whose jealousies, intrigues, and contentious debates led to a discovery. By...
Bourbaki was the last mathematician to master nearly all aspects of the field. There’s just one problem:...
Many were conflicted between their desire to believe and their want of rigorous intellectual explanation, and material...
In 1884 Edwin Abbott Abbott published Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, perhaps the first ever book that...
Mathematicians have known how to solve something called an S-unit equation for several years. However, the process...
Ratha Yatra Festival in Puri, India on James Fergusson’s painting / Public Domain Very little is known...
10th century CE Greek copy of Aristarchus of Samos’s calculations of the relative sizes of the sun, moon and the...
Zhengwei Liu (left) and Arthur Jaffe are leading a new project to expand quon, their pictorial math...
Where did our written numbers come from? Nikita Rogul/shutterstock.com Linguistic clues show how people around the world first developed mathematical...
Agnesi was the first woman to write a mathematics textbook. AlexeyMaltsev/shutterstock.com May 16 marks the 300th anniversary of the first woman to write...
10th century CE Greek copy of Aristarchus of Samos’s calculations of the relative sizes of the sun, moon and the...
Shutterstock Turning zero from a punctuation mark into a number paved the way for everything from algebra to algorithms. By Dr....
All accounted for in Babylon. Belshazzar’s Feast by Rembrandt. Everett – Art/Shutterstock The number crunchers who helped create our...
Primes still have the power to surprise. Chris-LiveLoveClick/shutterstock.com Prime numbers are the biggest and oldest data set in mathematics. Why have they...
Srinivasa Ramanujan (middle) with fellow scientists at Cambridge. Wikimedia The unlikely friendship that allowed an untrained Indian mathematician to...