HISTORY OF

MATHEMATICS
PART I
 Who is the author of
the book “Almagest”?
Ptolemy
Who is considered as the
“Prince of Mathematics”?
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Who is the author of the books
“Liber Abaci” and “Flos”?
Fibonacci
 He is known as the “Maker of
Mathematicians” who inscribed the
motto “Let no one ignorant of
mathematics (geometry) enter here.” in
his school.
Plato
He is the author of the
book “The Elements”
Euclid
He is known as “The
Greatest Might Have
Been”.
Blaise Pascal
Who is the “Father of
Accounting”?
Luca Pacioli
 He is known as “Frail Child of a Noble
Family”, who was honored by having the
rectangular coordinate system. The “Rule
of Signs” is also his significant
contribution.
Rene Descartes
 Who is the author of
the book “Ars Magna”?
Girolamo Cardano
 He is the first one to
use the term “pole” in
geometry?
Servois
He coined the term
“Logic of Chance”?
John Venn
 He invented at the age of 19 the
“Analytical Engine”, a machine
that can tabulate the values of
any function and print the results?
Charles Babbage
Who is known as the
“First True
Mathematician”?
Thales
Known as the “Father
of Modern Analysis”
Karl Weirstrass
 Who invented the now called
“Projective or Modern
Geometry”, a non-Greek way of
doing geometry
Girard Desargues
 He is remembered for
his prime number sieve
Eratosthenes
 He is famous for
predicting the day of his
own death
Abraham De Moivre
 He is known for inventing
common logarithm and the
terms mantissa and
characteristic
Henry Briggs
 He is known for
inventing natural
logarithm.
John Napier
She is considered to be
the first female
mathematician
Hypatia
 How many books does
The Elements contained
13
 Who created the
vertical notation for
determinants
Leopold Knonecker
Who is considered as
the inventor of set
theory?
Georg Cantor
 Regarded as the
“Revolutionary
Mathematician” of her times.
Sophie Germain
He created the equal
sign
Robert Recorde
 He is the author of the book
where the word “Algebra”
originated. He is also considered
as the Father of Algebra.
Al Khwarizmi
 Known as the Father of Algebra of the
16th Century. He introduced the first
systematic algebraic notation and
demonstrated the value of symbols
introducing letters to represent unknown.
Francois Viète
Who is regarded as the “Copernicus
of Geometry” and author of “On
the Principles of Geometry” and
“Imaginary Geometry”?
Nikolai Lobachevsky
 He is the author of the book
“Summa de Arithmetica” and
the one who created the “+”
and “-” signs.
Luca Pacioli
He is the author of the
book “Sphaerica”.
Menelaus of Alexandria
 The Elements is often
mistakenly thought of as
restricted to geometry. The
book also contains ________.
number theory
 Who is reputed to have
discovered the curves that were
later known as ellipse, parabola,
and hyperbola.
Menaechmus
 Who is the author of
the treatise on Conics?
Appolonius
 He is the proponent of the
“Materialistic Atomic Doctrine”
Democritus
 The discovery of the
Quadrature of Lunes is
attributed to __________.
Hippocrates
 The construction of solids
and theory of proportional
is being ascribed to _______.
Pythagoras
What is the motto of
the Pythagoreans?
All is numbers
 Who is the “Father of
Linear Programming”?
George Dantzig
Who published a treatise on geometry which contains
the earliest use of sin, tan, and sec as abbreviations
for sine, tangent, and secant, respectively?
Albert Girard
He is the proponent of the “Law of
Large Numbers”.
Jacob Bernoulli
 The Japanese-Chinese number system
is a ________ numeral system in base 10.
multiplicative grouping
 The present number system is a
________ numeral system in base 10.
positional
He worked with Johannes Kepler in
studying astronomy.
Galileo Galilei
 He published 3 books for quadrature of
parabola; spirals; and spheres and cylinders.
Archimedes
the "Prince of Amateurs," was the last great mathematician
to pursue the subject as a sideline to a nonscientific career
Pierre de Fermat’s
“Father of History”
HERODOTUS
Trisectrix or Quadratix
HIPPIAS OF ELIS
Mathematics in the curriculum
ARCHYTAS
Paradoxes (Dichotomy,
Achilles, Arrow, Stade)
ZENO
Discovered the Theory of Proportion and
Develop the
Method of Exhaustion
EUDOXUS
A Greek mathematician who is considered by many
as the “Father of Algebra” because of his works in
the syncopation of algebra
DIOPHANTUS
 A Greek mathematician of ancient times who
introduced trigonometry as a systematized
body of knowledge
HIPPARCUS
Squaring of the circle
DINOSTRATUS
“Greatest Mathematician of
Antiquity”
ARCHIMEDES OF SYRACUSE
Heliocentric system
ARISTARCHUS OF SAMOS
Principle of Least Distance
HERON OF ALEXANDRIA
Introductio Arithmetica (first
book written)
NICHOMACUS OF GERASA
Mathematical Collection
PAPPUS OF ALEXANDRIA
First introduced the word “statistiks”
in a preface to a statistical work
GOTTFRIED ACHENWALL
made a proposal to Blaise Pascal in the famous
Problem of Points, a work which marked the
beginning of the mathematics of probability
CHEVALIER DE MERE
Made an extensive study on correlation
among several variables
KARL PEARSON
A German mathematician who introduced the
words function, coordinate, abscissa, and
ordinate
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LIEBNIZ
Regarded function as any expression
made up of variables and constants
JOHANN BERNOULLI
 Swiss mathematician who introduced the
conventionalization of e for the base of
natural logarithm
LEONHARD EULER
The word discriminant came from the Latin word
“discrimen” which means “to distinguish”.
LEJEUNE DIRICHLET
First to explain the significance of zero,
negative, and fractional exponents
JOHN WALLIS
Showed that π is irrational
JOHANN HEINRICH LAMBERT
Showed that π is
transcendental
F. LINDEMANN
A Belgian Mathematician, first to demonstrate that
statistical techniques derived in in one area of
research can also be applied in other area
ADOLPH QUETELET
Author of the books Liber Abaci
and Flos
 FIBONACCI/ LEONARDO OF
PISA/LEONARDO PISANO BIGOLLO
Founder of medieval school of
mechanics
JORDANUS NEMORARIUS
( ALGORISMUS)
Tractarus de Proportionibus
THOMAS BRADWARDINE
Invented the inequality signs
“<” and “>”
THOMAS HARRIOT
Invented the multiplication sign
“x”
WILLIAM OUGHTRED
Algebra of Logic
GEORGE BOOLE
Proportion Theory generalization
NICOLE ORESME
 Wrote Art of Calculation
Wrote Harmony of Numbers
Wrote War of the Lords
LEVI BEN GERSON
Theory of Perspective
WERMER
Principles of foreshortening and then describes a method
he invented for representing in a vertical “picture plane”
a set of squares in a horizontal ground plane
ALBERTI
Known as the “Misguided Circle-
Squarer”
NICHOLAS OF CUSA
 Proposed using a single letter for the unknown
and for repeating the letter for higher powers of
the unknown
STIFLE
“Irreducible case”
RAFAEL BOMBELLI
Calculated elaborate tables of the
six trigonometric functions
RHETICUS
Published perhaps the earliest
map of the world
PETER APIAN
Cartography
MERCATOR
Pedagogical mathematics
RAMUS
Computing device and the precursor
of the logarithmic slide rule.
EDMUND GUNTER
Produced his so-called “arithmometer”, a
stepped-drum, movable-carriage machine
THOMAS OF COLMAR
Linear Associative Algebras
BENJAMIN PIERCE
Theory of Algebraic Functions
RICHARD DEDELEIND ANG
HENRICH WEBER
Function theory
RIEMANN
Automorphic functions and
differential equations
HENRI PARICARE
Invariant theory, Analysis
DAVID HILBERT
Fields Medals (International
Medal for Mathematics)
JOHN CHARLES FIELDS
Four-color conjecture
FRANCIS GUTHRIE
Simple Lie Groups (Finite Simple
Groups)
ELLIE CARTAN & WILHELM
KILLING
Indeterminate Equations
BRAHMAGUPTA
Expansion of the power series for
sines and cosines
MADHAVA
Lambert’s quadrangle
ALHAZEN
Continue the proof of parallel
postulate
NASIR AL-DIN AL-TUSI
Inventor of decimal fractions
AL- KASHI
Infinitesimal Methods
STEVIN
Principle of Continuity
JOHANNES KEPLER
Method of Indivisibles
BONAVENTURA CAVALIERIE
 Saw the inverse character of
quadrature and tangent problems
TORTICELLI
Sketch of the half of an arch of a
sine curve
ROBERVAL
Pendulum clock
CHRISTIAN HUYGEN
Extended quadratures of parabola
and hyperbola
JAMES GREGORY
hour glass
DANIEL BERNOULLI
Attempted to prove Euclid’s parallel postulate and
realized that it was possible to have a consistent
system of geometry
JANOS BOLYAI
 “Father of Differential Geometry”
Founder of Modern Synthetic Geometry
GASPARD MONGE
Theory of Equations
Group Theory
Ring Theory
EVARISTE GALOIS
Jalali Calendar
“tent maker”
OMAR KHAYYAM
Founder of Functions of
Complex Variable
CAUCHY
Pioneer of social mathematics
CORDOCET
Derivative (Theory of Functions)
LAGRANGE
 “True metaphysics will be
found in the idea of limits”.
JEAN LE ROND D’ALEMBERT
“The competent were not noble, and the
noble were not competent”.
LAZARE CAMOT
Theory of Probability
LAPLACE
Potential Theory
POISSON
THE END