HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS

• In 1988, Nicolas Slonimsky (1894-1995) invented a method of beating a different rhythm

with each arm–created a new composition by identifying each note in Beethoven’s Fifth
Symphony with a number, and then playing the square root of each note.
• The symbol for infinity (∞) was used by the Romans to represent 1000.
• All palindromes with even number of digits are divisible by 11.
• The earliest evidence of a numerical recording device is a section of a fibula of a baboon,
with 29 visible notches, dated to about 35000 BC, from a cave in the Lebombo mountains on
the borders of Swaziland in Southern Africa.
• The number 365 is equal to the sum of three consecutive squares and two consecutive
squares in which the five squares are also consecutive.
• 365 = 102 + 112 + 122 = 132 + 142
• 169 is equal to 132 and its reverse 961 is equal to 312.
• 206156734 = 26824404 + 153656394 + 187967604. This is an integer solution for the
equation w4 = x4 + y4 + z4 found by Noam Elkies.
• A tablet from Susa, dating from the period 1900-1650 BC, uses the Pythagorean theorem to
find the circumradius of a triangle whose sides are 50, 50, 60. Pythagoras himself lived in the
sixth century BC.
• Perfect squares are the only numbers with an odd number of divisors.
• Saint Hubert is the patron saint of mathematicians.
• When the English mathematician Augustus de Morgan was asked for his age, he would
reply, “I was x years of age in the year x²” (He was 43 in 1849)
• Newton’s annotated copy of Barrow’s Euclid was sold at auction in 1920 for five shillings.
Shortly thereafter, it appeared in a dealer’s catalog marked as £500.
• The Chinese were the first who used negative numbers around 2200 years ago or maybe
even earlier.
• Cardan (1501-1576) described negative numbers as “fictions” and their square roots as
“sophistic”, and a complex root of a quadratic, which he had calculated, as being “as subtle
that it is useless”.
• In chess, there are 4897256 total possible positions after 5 moves by both players.
• The probability that the thirteenth day of the month being Friday is the highest
• Richard Recorde is credited with inventing the equal sign) in 1557.
• People back then believe that the number of grains of sand is limitless. However,
Archimedes argued in The Sand Reckoner that the number of grains of sand is not infinite. He
then gave a method for calculating the highest number of grains of sand that can fit into the
universe, which was approximately 1063 grains of sand in his calculation.
• G. H. Hardy doesn’t like mirrors. He even covered the mirrors in any hotel rooms that he
entered.
• Some mathematical celebrations: March 14 – Pi Day; June 28 – Tau Day; October 10 –
Metric Day.
• The symbol for division (÷) is called obelus.
• On the other hand, the division slash (/) is called virgule.
• Negative numbers don’t have logarithms.
• The Babylonian mile is approximately equal to 11.3 km (about 7 miles).
• In which civilization dot patterns were first employed to represent numbers? Chinese
• The ancient Babylonians had their number system based on?
Answer: 60
• In which ancient civilization, numbers were for the first time represented by words? Indian
• In which ancient civilization, odd and even numbers were divided into two sets, the odd ones
denoted as males and the even females?
Chinese
• Among the numbers – Fibonacci, Kaprekar, Mersenne and Figurate numbers which one is
ancient in origin?
Figurate number
• Eudemus wrote an elaborate history of Greek geometry from its earliest origins
• Zephirum, lziphra, Cenero and Sifr are different names of Zero.
• Which ancient book contains 64 Hexagrams?
The book of changes
• Which mathematician prepared the trigonometric tables seen in a modern textbook?
Claudius Ptolemy
• Ahmose wrote one of the oldest documents on mathematics, Rhind Papyrus’
• Pythagorean ancient school odd thought believed that the universe is primarily made of
numbers
• Russell Maloney‘s story book gives an idea about statistics. Name this book. Inflexible logic
• Who is the author of geometry oriented science fiction Flatland?
Edwin A. Abbot
• “The world can be made intelligent in terms of right angles” This statement was made in a
world famous classic of Plato. Which is that classic? The Timaeus
• Who is the author of this book “The Law”?
Robert M. Coates
• “The senses delight in things duly proportional” who made this statement relating beauty to
mathematics? Thomas Aquinas
• Who said “music is the pleasure of the human soul experiences from counting without being
aware that it is counting”? G. W. Leibniz
• Who forwarded in his books this motto “The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers”?
Richard W. Hamming.
• An artist as well as mathematician, he wrote a book on geometrical and perspective meant
for artists. Who was he? Albrecht Durer
• Who said “the power is not in the hands of the few but information in the hands of the
many”? John Naisbitt
• Which books on mathematics has been described as a “scientific poem”?
Mecanique Analytique
• Who is the author of “Mecanique Analytique”? Joseph Lagrange
• Himself an esteemed philosopher of mathematics, he wrote solely and extensively on the
philosophy of mathematics. Who is he?
Ludwig Wittgenstein
• Who is the author of classic “Principia Mathematica”?
A. N. Whitehead and Bertrand Russell
• Who wrote one of the greatest mathematical treatises of ancient times the “Arithmetica”?
Diophantus
• Who wrote “A Mathematician‘s Apology”? G. H Hardy.
• Who wrote the first textbook on differential calculus?
Marquis de l’Hôpital
• Who is the author of “The Fractal Geometry of Nature” an important contribution to
understanding form and complexity in the physical universe? Benoit Mandelbrot
• Who wrote the classic “Paradoxes of the Infinite”? Bernhard Bolzano
• Who wrote “Liber Abaci” which introduced the Indian number system and zero to the
Europe? Leonardo da Pisa
• Which mathematician wrote “Discourse of Method” in bed when he was hardly 16 years old
and had studied mathematics for a few months only?
Rene Descartes
• Who wrote the classic “On Growth and Form” a mathematical treatment of natural history?
D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson
• Who wrote the popular “One, Two, Thre… Infinity” a book on numbers and their relationship
with the cosmos? George Gamow
• Jagjit Singh-author of “Mathematical Ideas, Their Nature and Use”
• James R. Newman-wrote the recent mathematical masterpiece “Godel, Escher, Bach: An
Eternal Golden Braid”
• A. Henry Rhind-discovered the oldest document on mathematics
• Augustus De Morgan-wrote the witty and amusing book “A Budget of Paradoxes”
• E. T. Bell-the author of the classic “Men of Mathematics”
• Menaechmus-the discoverer of conic sections
• Benoit Mandelbrot- formulated the concept of “Fractals”
• Adrien Marie Legendre- provided that π2 is irrational
• John Graunt- not so well known father of statistics
• Evangelista Torricelli- discovered the “Isogonic Centre” of the triangle
• Kurt Godel-formulated “the Incompleteness Theorem” no theory of all mathematics is finitely
describable, consistent and complete
• John Von Neumann-the originator of the game theory is now applied to business, war etc.
• Joseph Liouville- proved that transcendental numbers exist
• Daniel Bernoulli-father of mathematical physics
• George Cantor-discovered the science of infinity
• George Polya-gave a global plan to solve a mathematical problem
• Francesco Bonaventura Cavalieri- invented the invention of integral calculus
• John Napier-invented logarithm for faster calculations
• William Oughtred- invented the slide rule
• Eudoxus-invented the method of exhaustion for determining the areas and volume of
geometrical figures and solids respectively
• Piet Hein-inventor of super ellipse
• James Thomson- invented the integrator, an instrument which gives the value of definite
integrals
• Leonardo Torres y Quevedo-invented the first chess playing machine
• William R. Hamilton- invented “Quaternions”
• Gaspard Monge- invented what is known as “descriptive geometry”
• Claude Shannon- founded the mathematical theory of information
• Hipparchus-considered the founder of trigonometry
• Arthur Cayley-laid the foundation of matric algebra
• Josiah Williarrd Gibbs-founded the subject of vector analysis
• Thomas Bayes- founded the subject of functional analysis
• Pierre de Fermat-founder of modern theory of numbers
• Girard Desargues- founded the subject of projective geometry
• Isaac Barrow-he laid the foundation of calculus in geometrical form before it was actually
invented by others
• Charles Stanhope- built the first logic machine which could solve problems in formal logic
• William Stanley Jevons-built the first workable logic machine which could solve a problem
faster than a human being
• Howard H. Alken-built the first automatic calculating machine
• Vannevar Bush-built the first calculating machine that solved different equations
•Who published a treatise on trigonometry which contains the earliest use of our
abbreviations: sin, tan, sec, for sine, tangent and secant?
-Albert Gerard
•An 18th century Swiss Mathematician, he introduced the “Law of Large Numbers” in his (The
Art of Conjecture). In Statistics, this implies that the larger the sample, the more likely will the
sample become representative of the population. Who was he?
-Jacob Bernoulli
• He has been described as the greatest “might have been” in the history of Mathematics.
-Blaise Pascal
• He invented a method of determining the optimal values of a linear function subject to
certain constraints. This method is known as linear programming? Who was he?
-George Dantzig
• He was a 16th-century mathematician, who was the first to define that the probability of an
event to happen is the quotient of the number of favorable outcomes and the number of all
outcomes. Who was he?
-Girolamo Cardano
• The first to discover “zero”.
-Indian
• He was mostly remembered for his formula for( cos � + ����� )*, which was important
in the early development of the theory of complex numbers and for predicting the day of his
own death.
-Abraham de Moivre
• He achieved real fame when he submitted a paper to the Institute solving one of Fermat’s
claims on polygonal numbers made to Mersenne. He also wrote the memoir on definite
integrals that later became the basis of his theory of complex functions.
-Augustin Cauchy
• Italian Mathematician during the Renaissance period who was credited for solving one of the
outstanding ancient problems of mathematics, cubic equations.
-Scipione del Ferro
• A Russian Mathematician in the 19th century who would instead develop geometry without
Euclid’s fifth postulate and whose achievement exhibits the development of non- Euclidean
Geometry.
-Nikolai Lobachevsky
• A Greek mathematician who remembered for his prime number sieve
-Eratosthenes
• He was the mathematician who proposed basic descriptions of a point, a line and shapes.
He also discovered that square root of two is an irrational number and that there were
infinitely many prime numbers.
-Euclid
• An 18th century mathematician who enunciated the principles of the Calculus of variations
and became a lecturer in the Royal Artillery School at the age of 19
-Louis Lagrange
• Known as the father of modern analysis during 19th century who also devised tests for the
convergence and contributed to the theory of periodic functions, Abelian functions, elliptic
functions, etc.
-Karl Wierstrass
• He proved his famous “Basis Theorem” as he worked on invariant theory and challenged
mathematicians to solve fundamental questions that led to his famous speech “the Problems
of Mathematics”.
-David Hilbert
• A “grand” Russian mathematician who gave the basis for applying the theory of probability to
statistical data, worked on number of prime numbers not exceeding a given number, and
proved Bertrand’s conjecture in 1850.
-Patnuti Chebyshev
• A mathematician of medieval ages who invented a type of coordinate geometry by finding
the logical equivalence between tabulating values and graphing them.
-Nicole Oresme
• rich mathematician in France who invented a new, non-Greek way of doing geometry, now
called “projective” or “modern geometry”.
-Girard Desarques
• He was considered a universal genius by his contemporaries whose work encompasses not
only Mathematics and Philosophy but also Theology, Law, Diplomacy, Politics, and Physics.
He also developed the basic notations of his version of the Calculus and perfected the binary
system of arithmetic.
-Gottfried Leibnitz
• Archimedes proved, among many other geometrical results, that the volume of a sphere is
two-thirds the volume of a circumscribed cylinder. This he considered his most significant
accomplishments, requesting that a representation of a cylinder circumscribing a sphere be
inscribed on his tomb.
-ARCHIMEDES OF SYRACUSE
• A 19th century mathematician who added the integers from 1 to 100 within seconds by a
flash of mathematical insights.
-Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss
• He measured the length of the year as 365.2421986 days. He was well known for inventing
the method of solving cubic equations by intersecting a parabola with a circle and for
Fitzgerald’s popular translation of Rubaiyat.
-Omar Khayyam
• One of the earliest cities of the world built in India and was built to carefully planned and
tessellations.
-Indus
• He did notable work in Geometry, particularly studying higher plane curves. He also
considered the geometric problem of finding the difference between the volume of the frustum
of a solid of revolution and the volume of the cylinder of the same height as frustum.
-Colin Maclaurin
• An extinct Mesoamerican culture with surviving treatise on astronomy called Dresden Codex
and used vigesimal number system.
-Mayans
• It is the famous Chinese Mathematics book of all time which is also called Nine Chapters on
Mathematical Art.
-Jiuzhang Suanshu or Suàn shù shū
•A Bernoulli who considered the function � = �^x. and investigated series using the method
of integration by parts.
-Johann Bernoulli
• The FIRST mathematician to attempt to classify according to the types of equations that
produce them and also made contributions to the theory of equations.
-Rene Descartes
• He was the writer of set theory and was first to appreciate the value of one-to-one
correspondence for set theory.
-Georg Philip Cantor
• The first to show that ellipses, parabolas, and hyperbolas are obtained by cutting a cone in a
plane not parallel to the base.
-Menaechmus
• He wrote De Triangulus Omnimodis, a systematic account of methods for solving triangles,
and made important contributions to Trigonometry and Astronomy.
-Regiomontanus
• His greatest contributions include such groundbreaking texts in invention of divining rods
used as multiplication tables.
-John Napier
• This century came to be known as the Age of Scientific Revolution which saw an
unprecedented explosion of mathematical and scientific ideas across Europe.
-17th century
• It is a period prior to people kept written records.
-prehistory
• An 18th century mathematician who invented an analytical machine that can tabulate the
values of any function and print the results.
-Charles Babbage
• To whom the Greeks inherited their mathematical basis?
-babylonians
• People in Early Civilization who used Quipo to encode the numerical details and a counting
board, called YUPANA, to solve mathematical problems.
-Incans
• A 17th century French mathematician, philosopher, and scientist who was honored by
having Cartesian coordinate system. His rule of signs is also a commonly used method in
modern Mathematics.
-Rene Descartes
• He was considered as the father of differential geometry who introduced geometrie
descriptive now known as orthographic projection
-Gaspard Monge, Comte de Péluse
• Who laid the foundations for differential and integral Calculus?
-Sir Isaac Newton
• Who introduced topographical methods into complex function theory and examined the zeta
function (s) = (1/ns) = (1 – p-s)-1 which resulted to one of the most important of the unsolved
problems f Mathematics?
-Bernhard Riemann
• 16th century who proposed the “Apollonian Problem” (drawing a circle to touch 3 given
circles) and introduced the first systematic algebraic notation in his book “In Artem Analyticam
Isagoge”(Introduction to the Analytic Art)
-Francois Viete
• A Bernoulli who won in Paris Academy on 1725 because of his designed of an hour glass to
be used at sea and published Mathematical exercises in 1724 which consisted of four topics.
-Daniel Bernoulli
• An Italian mathematician best known today by his principle “the volume of two objects are
equal if the areas of their corresponding cross-sections are in all cases equal” and was
responsible for introducing logarithms as a computational tool in Italy.
-Bonaventura Cavalieri
• Cavalieri Principle: the volume of two objects are
equal if the areas of their corresponding cross-sections are in all cases equal
• A Greek mathematician who is remembered for his prime number Sieve.
-Erastothenes. He invented a mechanical device to find line segments x and y so that, for
given segments a and b, a:x = x:y = y:b
• An 18th century mathematician who enunciated the principles of the Calculus of variations
and became a lecturer in the Royal Artillery School at the age of 19.
-Louis Lagrange. He worked on number theory proving in 1770 that every positive integer is
the sum of four squares. He studied the integration of differential equations and made various
applications to topics such as fluid mechanics (where he introduced the Lagrangian function).