HISTORY OF

MATHEMATICS
CHAPTER 2: THE DEVELOPMENT OF MATHEMATICS: A
HISTORICAL OVERVIEW: MEDIEVAL PERIOD
Lesson 1: Medieval Period and Renaissance
 A. Medieval Period
Europe during the Middle Ages
With the third century after Christ begins an era of migration of nations in
Europe. The powerful Goths quit their swamps and forests in the North and sweep
onward in steady southwestern current, dislodging the Vandals, Sueves, and
Burgundians, crossing the Roman territory, and stopping and recoiling only when
reaching the shores of the Mediterranean. The Roman Empire falls to pieces, and the
Dark Ages begin. But dark though they seem, they are the germinating season of the
institutions and nations of modern Europe. The Teutonic element, partly pure, partly
intermixed with the Celtic and Latin, produces that strong and luxuriant growth, the
modern civilization of Europe. Almost all the various nations of Europe belong to the
Aryan stock. As the Greeks and the Hindoos -- both Aryan races -- were the great
thinkers of antiquity, so the nations north of the Alps became the great intellectual
leaders of modern times.
 A. Medieval Period
Introduction of Roman Mathematics
After the time of Boethius and Cassiodorius mathematical
activity in Italy died out. The first slender blossom of science among
tribes that came from the North was an encyclopedia entitled
Origines, written by Isidorus (died 636 as bishop of Seville). This
work is modelled after the Roman encyclopaedias of Martianus
Capella of Carthage and of Cassiodorius. Part of it is devoted to the
quadrivium, arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy.

Bede the Venerable (672-735), the most learned man of his time. His works
contain treatises on the Computus, or the computation of Easter-time, and on
finger-reckoning. It appears that a finger symbolism was then widely used for
calculation. It became desirable to have at least one monk at each monastery who
could determine the day of religious festivals and could compute the calendar.
Such determinations required some knowledge of arithmetic.
A. Medieval Period
Introduction of Roman Mathematics
The year in which Bede died, Alcuin (735-804) was born. Alcuin was
educated in Ireland, and was called to the court of Charlemagne to direct the
progress of education in the great Frankish Empire. In the great sees and
monasteries he founded schools in which were taught the psalms, writing,
singing, computation (computus), and grammar. It is not likely that Alcuin
was familiar with the apices of Boethius or with the Roman method of
reckoning on the abacus. He belongs to that long list of scholars who dragged
the theory of numbers into theology. Thus the number of beings created by
God, who created all things well, is 6, because 6 is a perfect number (the sum
of its divisors being 1 + 2 + 3 = 6); 8, on the other hand, is an imperfect
number (1+2+4 < 8); hence the second origin of mankind emanated from the
number 8, which is the number of souls said to have been in Noah's ark.
A. Medieval Period
Introduction of Roman Mathematics
Gerbert. he engaged in study, chiefly of mathematics, in Spain.
-Such was the career of the greatest mathematician of the tenth century in Europe.
By his contemporaries his mathematical knowledge was considered wonderful.
Many even accused him of criminal intercourse with evil spirits.
-he found the geometry of Boethius. It was at that time the only book from
which European scholars could learn the elements of geometry.
-He generally believed himself to be the author of geometry.
-He explained the reason why the area of a triangle, obtained
“geometrically" by taking the product of the base by half its altitude, differs
1
from the area calculated “arithmetically," according to the formula a(a +
2
1), used by surveyors.
-He died in 1003, after a life intricately involved in many political and
ecclesiastical quarrels.
A. Medieval Period
Translation of Arabic Manuscripts

Gerbert infused new life into the study not only of mathematics, but
also of philosophy. Pupils from France, Germany, and Italy gathered at
Rheims to enjoy his instruction. When they themselves became
teachers, they taught of course not only the use of the abacus and
geometry, but also what they had learned of the philosophy of Aristotle.
This led them finally to search for and translate Arabic manuscripts.
During this search, mathematical works also came to their notice, and
were translated into Latin. Though some few unimportant works may
have been translated earlier, yet the period of greatest activity began
about 1100.
A. Medieval Period
Translation of Arabic Manuscripts

Among the earliest scholars engaged in translating manuscripts

into Latin was Athelard of Bath. The period of his activity is
the first quarter of the twelfth century. He travelled extensively
in Asia Minor, Egypt, and Spain, and braved a thousand perils,
that he might acquire the language and science of the
Mohammedans. He made the earliest translations, from the
Arabic, of Euclid's Elements and of the astronomical tables of
Mohammed ben Musa Hovarezmi. In 1857, a manuscript was
found in the library at Cambridge, which proved to be the
arithmetic by Mohammed ben Musa in Latin. This translation
also is very probably due to Athelard.
 A. Medieval Period
Translation of Arabic Manuscripts

John of Seville was most prominent student. He translated works chiefly on

Aristotelian philosophy. It is argued by some that Gerbert got his apices and his
arithmetical knowledge, not from Boethius, but from the Arabs in Spain, and that
part or the whole of the geometry of Boethius is a forgery. If this were the case, then
the writings of Gerbert would betray Arabic sources, as do those of John of Seville.
But no points of resemblance are found. In illustrating an example in division,
mathematicians of the tenth and eleventh centuries state an example in Roman
numerals, then draw an abacus and insert in it the necessary numbers with the
apices. Hence it seems probable that the abacus and apices were borrowed from the
same source. The contrast between authors like John of Seville, drawing from Arabic
works, and the abacists.
A. Medieval Period
Translation of Arabic Manuscripts

A little later than John of Seville nourished Gerard of Cremona

in Lombardy. Being desirous to gain possession of the Almagest,
he went to Toledo, and there, in 1175, translated this great work
of Ptolemy. Inspired by the richness of Mohammedan literature,
he gave himself up to its study. He translated into Latin over 70
Arabic works. Of mathematical treatises, there were among
these, besides the Almagest, the 15 books of Euclid, the
Sphaerica of Theodosius, a work of Menelaus, the algebra of
Mohammed ben Musa Hovarezmi, the astronomy of Dshabir ben
Aah, and others less important.
A. Medieval Period
Translation of Arabic Manuscripts
Another royal head was Alfonso X of Castile (died 1284). He
gathered around him a number of Jewish and Christian scholars,
who translated and compiled astronomical works from Arabic
sources. Rabbi Zag and Iehuda ben Mose Cohen were the most
prominent among them. Astronomical tables prepared by these
two Jews spread rapidly in the Occident, and constituted the
basis of all astronomical calculation till the sixteenth century.
Giovanni Campano of Novara (about 1260) brought out a new
translation of Euclid, which drove the earlier ones from the field,
and which formed the basis of the printed editions
It is important to notice that no work either on mathematics or astronomy was
translated directly from the Greek previous to the fifteenth century.
 A. Medieval Period
The Fist Awakening and its Sequel
Leonardo of Pisa is a merchant, who in the midst of business pursuits found time for
scientific study. He is the man to whom we owe the first renaissance of mathematics
on Christian soil. He is also called Fibonacci, son of Bonaccio. Of all the methods of
calculation, he found the Hindoo to be unquestionably the best. Returning to Pisa, he
published, in 1202, his great work, the Liber Abaci, a revised edition of this appeared
in 1228. This work contains about all the knowledge the Arabs possessed in
arithmetic and algebra, and treats the subject in a free and independent way. This,
together with the other books of Leonardo, shows that he was not merely a compiler,
or, like other writers of the Middle Ages, a slavish imitator of the form in which the
subject had been previously presented, but that he was an original worker of
exceptional power.
In 1220, Leonardo of Pisa published his Practica Geometri_, which contains all the
knowledge of geometry and trigonometry transmitted to him. Leonardo's Geometry
contains an elegant geometrical demonstration of Heron's formula for the area of a
triangle, as a function of its three sides.
 A. Medieval Period
The Fist Awakening and its Sequel
Few authors who lived during the 13th and 14th and the first half of the 15th centuries.
a. Leonardo of Pisa (1200 a.d.), lived the German monk
b. Jordanus Nemorarius, who wrote a once famous work on the properties of numbers
(1496), modelled after the arithmetic of Boethius.
c. John Halifax (Sacro Bosco, died 1256) taught in Paris and made an extract from the
Almagest containing only the most elementary parts of that work.
d. Other prominent writers are Albertus Magnus and George Purbach in Germany, and
Roger Bacon in England.
e. Nicole Oresme, a bishop in Normandy (died 1382), first conceived a notation of fractional
powers, afterwards re-discovered by Stevinus.
f. Thomas Bradwardine, archbishop of Canterbury, studied star-polygons, a subject which
has recently received renewed attention.
g. Geometry of Boethius and also in the translation of Euclid from the Arabic by Athelard of
Bath.
h. Bradwardine's philosophic writings contain discussions on the infinite.
 A. Renaissance
Trigonometry
John Mueller, more generally called Regiomontanus (1436-1476) revived
trigonometry. He studied astronomy and trigonometry at Vienna under the
celebrated George Purbach. The latter perceived that the existing Latin
translations of the Almagest were full of errors, and that Arabic authors had not
remained true to the Greek original. Purbach therefore began to make a
translation directly from the Greek. But he did not live to finish it. His work was
continued by Regiomontanus, who went beyond his master. Regiomontanus and
Purbach adopted the Hindoo sine in place of the Greek chord of double the arc. He
emphasized the use of the tangent in trigonometry. Following out some ideas of his
master, he calculated a table of tangents.
Regiomontanus ranks among the greatest men that Germany has ever produced. So
great was his reputation, that Pope Sixtus IV called him to Italy to improve the calendar.
 A. Renaissance
Trigonometry

Georg Joachim of Feldkirch in Tyrol, generally called Rhaeticus, deserves special

mention calculated a table of sines with the radius = 10; 000; 000; 000 and from
1000 to 1000. He began also the construction of tables of tangents and secants, to
be carried to the same degree of accuracy; but he died before finishing them. The
work was completed by his pupil, Valentine Otho, in 1596. The tables were
republished in 1613 by Pitiscus, who spared no pains to free them of errors. Up to
this time, the trigonometric functions had been considered always with relation to
the arc; Rhaeticus was the first to construct the right triangle and to make them
depend directly upon its angles. It was from the right triangle that Rhaeticus got his
idea of calculating the hypotenuse.
A. Renaissance
Algebraic Equations
The first comprehensive algebra printed was that of
Lucas Pacioli. The first step in the algebraic solution of
cubic was taken by Scipio Ferro (died 1526), a
professor of mathematics at Bologna, who solved the
equation 𝑥 3 + mx = n. Nothing more is known of his
discovery than that he imparted it to his pupil,
Floridas, in 1505. It was the practice in those days and
for two centuries afterwards to keep discoveries secret,
in order to secure by that means an advantage over
rivals by proposing problems beyond their reach. This
practice gave rise to numberless disputes regarding the
priority of inventions.
 A. Renaissance
Algebraic Equations

A second solution of cubics was given by Nicolo of Brescia (1506(?)-1557). When a

boy of six, Nicolo was so badly cut by a French soldier that he never again gained
the free use of his tongue. Hence he was called Tartaglia, the stammerer. In 1530,
one Colla proposed him several problems, one leading to the equation 𝑥 3 + p𝑥 2 = q.
Tartaglia found an imperfect method for solving this, but kept it secret. He spoke
about his secret in public and thus caused Ferro's pupil, Floridas, to proclaim his
own knowledge of the form 𝑥 3 + mx = n. Floridas challenged him to solve problems
and he solved thrity problems in just two hours. The news of Tartaglia's victory
spread all over Italy. But a scholar from Milan, named Hieronimo Cardano (1501-
1576), after many solicitations, and after giving the most solemn and sacred
promises of secrecy, succeeded in obtaining from Tartaglia a knowledge of his rules.
A. Renaissance
Algebraic Equations

At this time Cardan was writing his Ars Magna, and he knew no better way to
crown his work than by inserting the much sought for rules for solving
cubics. Thus Cardan took all recognitions about cubics but Tartaglia
reclaimed them all by challenging Cardan and his students for a battle. After
having recovered himself again, Tartaglia began, in 1556, the publication of
the work which he had had in his mind for so long; but he died before he
reached the consideration of cubic equations. Thus the fondest wish of his life
remained unfulfilled; the man to whom we owe the greatest contribution to
algebra made in the sixteenth century was forgotten, and his method came to
be regarded as the discovery of Cardan and to be called Cardan's solution.
A. Renaissance
Algebraic Equations

Colla gave challenged to Cardan in 1540 about the solution of

𝑥 4 + 6𝑥 2 + 36 = 60𝑥 but failed to do so it was left to his student
Ferrari about the biquadratic equation where he succeeded.
Cardan applied the Hindoo rule of “false position” to the cubic but
Franciscus Vieta (1540 – 1603), a French mathematician with
several important innovations invented a better method in solving
higher equations.
 A. Renaissance
Algebraic Equations

Our sign of equality is due to Robert Recorde (1510-1558), the

author of The Whetstone of Witte (1557), which is the first English
treatise on algebra. He selected this symbol because no two things
could be more equal than two parallel lines =. The sign ÷ for division
was first used by Johann Heinrich Rahn, a Swiss, in 1659, and was
introduced in England by John Pell in 1668. Michael Stifel (1486?-
1567), the greatest German algebraist of the sixteenth century, was
born in Esslingen, and died in Jena. He was educated in the
monastery of his native place, and afterwards became Protestant
minister.
A. Renaissance
Algebraic Equations

The first algebraist who occasionally places a purely negative

quantity by itself on one side of an equation, is Harriot in
England. As regards the recognition of negative roots, Cardan
and Bombelli were far in advance of all writers of the
Renaissance, including Vieta. Yet even they mentioned these so-
called false or fictitious roots only in passing, and without
grasping their real significance and importance.
 A. Renaissance
Geometry

Unlike algebra, it made hardly any progress. The

greatest gain was a more intimate knowledge of
Greek geometry. No essential progress was made
before the time of Descartes. Regiomontanus,
Xylander of Augsburg, Tartaglia, Commandinus of
Urbino in Italy, Maurolycus, and others, made
translations of geometrical works from the Greek.

One great achievement is the improvements of the Julian calendar. The

yearly determination of the movable feasts had for a long time been
connected with an untold amount of confusion.
HISTORY OF
MATHEMATICS
CHAPTER 2: THE DEVELOPMENT OF MATHEMATICS: A
HISTORICAL OVERVIEW: MEDIEVAL PERIOD
Lesson 2. Birth of Calculus
 Birth of Calculus
Gottfried Leibniz: The Calculus Controversy

In the fall of 1661, the same date that Newton entered Cambridge, Leibniz became
a student at the university of his native city, Leipzig. Only 15 at the time, he was
regarded as something of a prodigy and soon outstripped all his contemporaries.
Arithmetic was taught at an elementary level, prescribed by the textbooks of the
German Jesuit Christoph Clavius (1537–1612). Leibniz was given a teaching
position in the philosophical faculty at Leipzig, for which he qualified by writing
Disputatio Arithmetica de Complexionibus; this work, which was expanded into Ars
Combinatoria (1666), extensively develops the theory of permutations and
combinations for the purpose of making logical deductions. Moreover, Leibniz
suggested that a calculus of reasoning could be devised that would provide an
automatic method of solution for all problems that could be expressed in his
scientific language.
Birth of Calculus
Leibniz’s Creation of the Calculus

In the years from 1672 to 1676, spent in Paris, Leibniz’s slowly powering
mathematical genius matured. (This concentrated period of creativity is
reminiscent of Newton’s golden years” 1664–1666 at Woolsthorpe.) During this
time, he developed the principal features and notation of his version of the
calculus. Various methods had been invented for determining the tangent lines
to certain classes of curves, but as yet nobody had made known similar
procedures for solving the inverse problem, that is, deriving the equation of the
curve itself from the properties of its tangents. Leibniz stated the inverse
tangent problem thus: “To find the locus of the function, provided the locus
which determines the subtangent is known.”
Birth of Calculus
Newton’s Fluxional Calculus
Before Leibniz left Paris in the autumn of 1676, he found himself
in possession of the rules and notation of his calculus. He
suspected, but could not be sure, that Newton had developed an
equivalent approach, one far more geometrically slanted. This was
precisely the case. Newton was in his twenties, during the same
period in which he had discovered the binomial theorem. The bulk
of Newton’s early work on calculus was condensed into a small
treatise of some 30 crowded pages, covering such things as
tangency, curvature, centers of gravity, and area. The work, which
Newton seems never to have given a definite title, is known in the
learned literature as the October 1666 Tract.
 Birth of Calculus
Newton’s Fluxional Calculus
Throughout the year, Leibniz had become keenly interested in the mathematical
writings of Newton and had asked Oldenburg for further information about them.
The first letter contained the binomial theorem, as well as a summary of Newton’s
more important work on series. Although nothing was said of his secret discovery of
uxions, there was a vague hint that Newton had an important method in mind.
Newton could not refuse Oldenburg’s request to give Leibniz the information he
wanted but was still disinclined to divulge his secret. Thus it came about that
although Newton had invented his method of uxions many years before Leibniz had
invented his rival method of “differences,” Leibniz was the first of the two to publish
and to make known to the learned world his results. Had Newton secured
publication for his De Methodis Fluxionum when it was originally written in 1671, he
would have had no competitor, and mathematical history might well have taken a
different course.
HISTORY OF
MATHEMATICS
CHAPTER 2: THE DEVELOPMENT OF MATHEMATICS: A
HISTORICAL OVERVIEW: MEDIEVAL PERIOD
Lesson 3. Euler, Fermat and Descartes
Euler, Fermat and Descartes
René Descartes

Among the earliest thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth

centuries, who employed their mental powers toward the destruction
of old ideas and the up-building of new ones, ranks René Descartes
(1596-1650). His philosophy has long since been superseded by
other systems, but the analytical geometry of Descartes will remain a
valuable possession forever. At twenty-one, mathematics was his
favourite science. But in 1625 he ceased to devote himself to pure
mathematics. The years between 1629 and 1649 were passed by him
in Holland in the study, principally, of physics and metaphysics. In
1637 he published his Discours de la Méthode, containing among
others an essay of 106 pages on geometry. His Geometry is not easy
reading. An edition appeared subsequently with notes by his friend
De Beaune, which were intended to remove the difficulties.
Euler, Fermat and Descartes
René Descartes

In the Greek geometry, the idea of motion was wanting, but with
Descartes it became a very fruitful conception. By him a point on
a plane was determined in position by its distances from two
fixed right lines or axes. These distances varied with every change
of position in the point. This geometric idea of co-ordinate
representation, together with the algebraic idea of two variables
in one equation having an indefinite number of simultaneous
values, furnished a method for the study of loci, which is
admirable for the generality of its solutions. Thus the entire conic
sections of Apollonius is wrapped up and contained in a single
equation of the second degree.
Euler, Fermat and Descartes
René Descartes

The Latin term for “ordinate" used by Descartes comes from

the expression lineae ordinatae, employed by Roman surveyors
for parallel lines. The term abscissa occurs for the first time in
a Latin work of 1659, written by Stefano degli Angeli (1623-
1697), a professor of mathematics in Rome. Descartes'
geometry was called “analytical geometry," partly because,
unlike the synthetic geometry of the ancients, it is actually
analytical, in the sense that the word is used in logic; and
partly because the practice had then already arisen, of
designating by the term analysis the calculus with general
quantities.
 Euler, Fermat and Descartes
René Descartes
One of the most devoted pupils of Descartes was the learned Princess Elizabeth,
daughter of Frederick V She applied the new analytical geometry to the solution of the
“Apollonian problem." His second royal follower was Queen Christina, the daughter of
Gustavus Adolphus. She urged upon Descartes to come to the Swedish court. He died at
Stockholm one year later. His life had been one long warfare against the prejudices of
men.
It is most remarkable that the mathematics and philosophy of Descartes should at
first have been appreciated less by his countrymen than by foreigners. The indiscreet
temper of Descartes alienated the great contemporary French mathematicians, Roberval,
Fermat, Pascal. They continued in investigations of their own, and on some points
strongly opposed Descartes. The universities of France were under strict ecclesiastical
control and did nothing to introduce his mathematics and philosophy. It was in the
youthful universities of Holland that the effect of Cartesian teachings was most
immediate and strongest.
Euler, Fermat and Descartes
Leonhard Euler
Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) was born in Basel. His father, a
minister, gave him his first instruction in mathematics and then
sent him to the University of Basel, where he became a favorite
pupil of John Bernoulli. In his nineteenth year he composed a
dissertation on the masting of ships, which received the second
prize from the French Academy of Sciences. In 1735 the solving of
an astronomical problem, proposed by the Academy, for which
several eminent mathematicians had demanded some months'
time, was achieved in three days by Euler with aid of improved
methods of his own. But the effort threw him into a fever and
deprived him of the use of his right eye. With still superior
methods this same problem was solved later by the illustrious
Gauss in one hour!
Euler, Fermat and Descartes
Leonhard Euler
He treated trigonometry as a branch of analysis, introduced
(simultaneously with Thomas Simpson in England) the now
current abbreviations for trigonometric functions, and simplified
formulae by the simple expedient of designating the angles of a
triangle by A,B,C, and the opposite sides by a, b, c, respectively.
He pointed out the relation between trigonometric and
exponential functions and the value of π as 3.14159… Euler laid
down the rules for the transformation of co-ordinates in space,
gave a methodic analytic treatment of plane curves and of
surfaces of the second order. He was the first to discuss the
equation of the second degree in three variables, and to classify
the surfaces represented by it. By criteria analogous to those
used in the classification of conics he obtained five species.
Euler, Fermat and Descartes
Leonhard Euler

Euler developed the calculus of finite differences in

the first chapters of his Institutiones calculi
differentialis, and then deduced the differential
calculus from it. He established a theorem on
homogeneous functions, known by his name, and
contributed largely to the theory of differential
equations, a subject which had received the attention
of Newton, Leibniz, and the Bernoullis, but was still
undeveloped.
Euler, Fermat and Descartes
Pierre de Fermat

Pierre de Fermat (1601–1665), stood as an equal among these brilliant

scholars. Fermat, the “Prince of Amateurs,” was the last great mathematician
to pursue the subject as a sideline to a nonscientific career. Fermat evidently
had no particular mathematical training, and evidenced no interest in its
study until he was past 30; to him it was merely a hobby to be cultivated in
leisure time. He was one of the inventors of analytic geometry, he laid the
technical foundations of differential and integral calculus, and with Pascal he
established the conceptual guidelines of the theory of probability. Fermat’s
real love in mathematics was undoubtedly number theory, which he rescued
from the realm of superstition and occultism, where it had long been
imprisoned. His contributions there overshadowed all else. It may well be
said that the revival of interest in the abstract side of number theory began
with Fermat; for by his refusal to accept rational solutions to diophantine
problems, insisting rather on solutions in the integers, he represented a
break with the classical tradition of the Arithmetica.
Euler, Fermat and Descartes
Pierre de Fermat
Fermat preferred the pleasure he derived from mathematical
research itself to any reputation that it might bring him. Indeed,
he published only one important manuscript during his lifetime,
and that just five years before his death, using the concealing
initials M.P.E.A.S. Adamantly refusing to bring his work to the
state of perfection that publication would demand, he thwarted
the several efforts of others to make the results available in print
under his name. Roberval, as early as 1637, offered to edit and
publish some of Fermat’s papers, but he was told, “Whatever of
my works is judged worthy of publication, I do not want my name
to appear there.” Yet the man who shunned formal publication
still took pride in his achievements and did not want to remain
entirely unknown.