HELLENISTIC MATHEMATICS

Alexandria in Egypt became a great centre of learning and its famous Library soon gained a
reputation to rival that of the Athenian Academy. Euclid, Archimedes, Eratosthenes, Heron,
Menelaus and Diophantus were among the best known and most influential mathematicians
who studied and taught there.

During the late 4th and early 3rd Century BCE:

 Euclid one of the most influential teachers in history and virtually invented classical
(Euclidean) geometry.
 Archimedes is perhaps best known as an engineer and inventor but, in the light of
recent discoveries, he is now considered of one of the greatest pure mathematicians of all
time.
 Eratosthenes of Alexandria devised the first system of latitude and longitude, and
calculated the circumference of the earth to a remarkable degree of accuracy. His
greatest legacy is the “Sieve of Eratosthenes” algorithm for identifying prime numbers.

In the 1st century BCE, Heron (or Hero) 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
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Menelaus of Alexandria, was the first to recognize geodesics on a

curved surface as the natural analogues of straight lines on a flat
plane and introduced the concept of spherical triangle (a figure
formed of three great circle arcs, which he named “trilaterals“).

In the 3rd Century CE, Diophantus of Alexandria was the first to

recognize fractions as numbers. He applied himself to Diophantine
Analysis, which deals with finding integer solutions to kinds of
problems that lead to equations in several unknowns (Diophantine
equations). Spherical Triangle

Apollonius of Perga (a city in modern-day

southern Turkey) whose late 3rd Century
BCE work on geometry (and, in particular, on
conics and conic sections). 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.

Hipparchus, revived the use of arithmetic

techniques first developed by the Chaldeans and Babylonians, and is usually credited with the
beginnings of trigonometry. He calculated (with remarkable accuracy for the time) the distance
of the moon from the earth by measuring the different parts of the moon visible at different
locations and calculating the distance using the properties of triangles. He went on to create
the first table of chords (side lengths corresponding to different angles of a triangle).

Ptolemy in the 2nd Century CE, was able to include in his “Almagest” a table of trigonometric
chords in a circle for steps of ¼° which (although expressed sexagesimally in the Babylonian
style) is accurate to about five decimal places.

By the middle of the 1st Century BCE and thereafter, however, the Romans had tightened their
grip on the old Greek empire. The final blow to the Hellenistic mathematical heritage at
Alexandria might be seen in the figure of Hypatia, the first recorded female mathematician, and
a renowned teacher who had written some respected commentaries on Diophantus and
Apollonius. She was dragged to her death by a Christian mob in 415 CE.

ROMAN MATHEMATICS – Numerals & Arithmetic

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 Roman Numerals
note. The Romans had no use for pure
mathematics, only for its practical applications, and the Christian regime that followed it (after
Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire) even less so.

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.
Roman Arithmetic
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. Due to the difficulty of written arithmetic using Roman numeral
notation, calculations were usually performed with an abacus, based on
earlier Babylonian and Greek abaci.

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. At its peak, it was one of the most densely
populated and culturally dynamic societies in the
world.

The Maya constructed quite early a very sophisticated

number system, possibly more advanced than any
other in the world at the time.
Mayan Numerals
Vigesimal – Base 20 Number System
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., although in their calendar
calculations they gave the third position a value of 360 instead of 400 (higher positions revert
to multiples of 20).

Mayan zero
The pre-classic Maya and their neighbours had independently developed the concept of zero
(Mayan 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).

However, due to the geographical disconnect, Mayan and Mesoamerican mathematics had
absolutely no influence on Old World (European and Asian) numbering systems and
mathematics.

CHINESE MATHEMATICS
The Chinese Number System

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. Ancient Chinese Number System

Written numbers, however, employed the slightly less efficient system of using a different
symbol for tens, hundreds, thousands, etc. This was largely because there was no concept or
symbol of zero, and it had the effect of limiting the usefulness of the written number in Chinese.

The use of the abacus is often thought of as a Chinese idea, although some type of abacus was
in use in Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece, probably much earlier than in China (the first
Chinese abacus, or “suanpan”, we know of dates to about the 2nd Century BCE).

Lo Shu magic square

The Lo Shu Square, an order three square where each row, column and diagonal adds up to 15,
is perhaps the earliest of these magic squares, dating back to around 650. 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 triangular representation of binomial coefficients identical
to the later Pascals’ Triangle, and was perhaps the first to use decimal fractions in the modern
form).

Early Chinese Method of Solving Equations

A textbook called “Jiuzhang Suanshu” or “Nine Chapters on
the Mathematical Art” was particularly important as a
guide to how to solve equations – the deduction of an
unknown number from other known information – using a
sophisticated matrix-based method.

Among the greatest mathematicians of ancient China was

Liu Hui, who 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 form of both integral and differential calculus.

The Chinese Remainder Theorem Early Chinese Method of Solving Problems

The Chinese Remainder

Theorem uses the remainders after dividing an unknown
number by a succession of smaller numbers, such as 3, 5
and 7, in order to calculate the smallest value of the
unknown number. A technique for solving such problems,
initially posed by Sun Tzu in the 3rd Century CE 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.

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. Qin
even extended his technique to solve (albeit approximately)
The Chinese Remainder Theorem
equations involving numbers up to the power of ten,
extraordinarily complex mathematics for its time.