677

and other tales of mathematical history

edited by Marlow Anderson, Victor Katz, Robin Wilson

Mathematical Association of America

2004

x, 387 p.: illus, maps, ports

Includes bibliographical references and index

Anderson, Marlow,Katz, Victor J,Wilson, Robin J

QA

21

.S48

2004

682

Ancient mathematics. Sherlock Holmes in Babylon /R. Creighton Buck -- Words and pictures: new light on Plimpton 322 /Eleanor Robson -- Mathematics, 600 B.C.-600 A.D. /Max Dehn -- Diophantus of Alexandria /J.D. Swift -- Hypatia of Alexandria /A.W. Richeson -- Hypatia and her mathematics /Michael A.B. Deakin -- The evolution of mathematics in ancient China /Frank Swetz -- Liu Hui and the first golden age of Chinese mathematics /Philip D. Straffin, Jr. -- Number systems of the North American Indians /W.C. Eells -- The number system of the Mayas /A.W. Richeson -- Before the conquest /Marcia Ascher -- Medieval and renaissance mathematics. The discovery of the series formula for [pi] by Leibniz, Gregory and Nilakantha /Ranjan Roy -- Ideas of calculus in Islam and India /Victor J. Katz -- Was calculus invented in India? /David Bressoud -- An early iterative method for the determinationof sin 1?p0?s /Farhad Riahi --- Leonardo of Pisa and his Liber Quadratorum /R.B. McClenon -- The algorists vs. the abacists: an ancient controversy on the use of calculators /Barbara E. Reynolds -- Sidelights on the Cardan-Tartaglia controversy /Martin A. Nordgaard -- Reading Bombelli's x-purgated algebra /Abraham Arcavi and Maxim Bruckheimer -- The first work on mathematics printed in the New World /David Eugene Smith -- The seventeenth century. An application of geography to mathematics: history of the integral of the secant /V. Frederick Rickey and Philip M. Tuchinsky -- Some historical notes on the cycloid /E.A. Whitman -- Descartes and the problem-solving /Judith Grabiner -- Rene Descartes' curve-drawing devices: experiments in the relations between mechanical motion and symbolic language /David Dennis -- Certain mathematical achievements of James Gregory /Max Dehn and E.D. Hellinger -- The changing concept of change: the derivative from Fermat to Weierstrass /Judith V. Grabiner --- The crooked made straight: Roberval and Newton on tangents /Paul R. Wolfson -- On the discovery of the logarithmic series and its development in England up to Cotes /Josef Ehrenfried Hofmann -- Isaac Newton: man, myth and mathematics /V. Frederick Rickey -- Reading the master: Newton and the birth of celestial mechanics /Bruce Pourciau -- Newton as an originator of polar coordinates /C.B. Boyer -- Newton's method for resolving affected equations /Chris Christensen -- A contribution of Leibniz to the history of complex numbers /R.B. McClenon -- Functions of a curve: Leibniz's original notion of functions /David Dennis and Jere Confrey -- The eighteenth century. Brook Taylor and the mathematical theory of linear perspectives /P.S. Jones -- Was Newton's calculus a dead end? The continental influence of Maclaurin's treatise of fluxions /Judith Grabiner -- Discussion of fluxions: from Berkeley to Woodhouse /Florian Cajori --- The Bernoullis and the harmonic series /William Dunham -- Leonhard Euler 1707-1783 /J.J. Burckhardt -- The number e /J.L. Coolidge -- Euler's vision of a general partial differential calculus for a generalized kind of function /Jesper Lutzen -- Euler and the fundamental theorem of algebra /William Dunham -- Euler and differentials /Anthony P. Ferzola -- Euler and quadratic reciprocity /Harold M. Edwards.