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The history of mathematics deals with the origin of discoveries in mathematics and the mathematical methods and notation of the past. Before the modern age and worldwide spread of knowledge, written examples of new mathematical developments have come to light only in a few locales. From 3000 BC the states of Sumer, Akkad and Assyria, followed closely by Ancient Egypt and the Levantine state of Ebla began using arithmetic, algebra and geometry for taxation, commerce, trade, and in astronomy, to record time and formulate calendars.
The earliest mathematical texts available are from Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt – Plimpton 322 (Babylonian – 1900 BC),Friberg, J. (1981). "Methods and traditions of Babylonian mathematics. Plimpton 322, Pythagorean triples, and the Babylonian triangle parameter equations", Historia Mathematica, 8, pp. 277–318. the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus (Egyptian c. 1800 BC) Chap. IV "Egyptian Mathematics and Astronomy", pp. 71–96. and the Moscow Mathematical Papyrus (Egyptian c. 1890 BC). All these texts mention the so-called Pythagorean triples, so, by inference, the Pythagorean theorem seems to be the most ancient and widespread mathematical development, after basic arithmetic and geometry.
The study of mathematics as a "demonstrative discipline" began in the 6th century BC with the Pythagoreans, who coined the term "mathematics" from the ancient Greek language μάθημα ( mathema), meaning "subject of instruction". Greek mathematics greatly refined the methods (especially through the introduction of deductive reasoning and mathematical rigor in proofs) and expanded the subject matter of mathematics.Heath, Thomas L. (1963). A Manual of Greek Mathematics, Dover, p. 1: "In the case of mathematics, it is the Greek contribution which it is most essential to know, for it was the Greeks who first made mathematics a science." The ancient Romans used applied mathematics in surveying, structural engineering, mechanical engineering, bookkeeping, creation of Lunar calendar and , and even Roman art. Chinese mathematics made early contributions, including a place value system and the first use of negative numbers.Joseph, George Gheverghese (1991). The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of Mathematics. Penguin Books, London, pp. 140–48.Ifrah, Georges (1986). Universalgeschichte der Zahlen. Campus, Frankfurt/New York, pp. 428–37. The Hindu–Arabic numeral system and the rules for the use of its operations, in use throughout the world today, evolved over the course of the first millennium AD in India and were transmitted to the Western world via Islamic mathematics through the work of Khwārizmī.Kaplan, Robert (1999). The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero. Allen Lane/The Penguin Press, London."The ingenious method of expressing every possible number using a set of ten symbols (each symbol having a place value and an absolute value) emerged in India. The idea seems so simple nowadays that its significance and profound importance is no longer appreciated. Its simplicity lies in the way it facilitated calculation and placed arithmetic foremost amongst useful inventions. the importance of this invention is more readily appreciated when one considers that it was beyond the two greatest men of Antiquity, Archimedes and Apollonius." – Pierre Simon Laplace http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/HistTopics/Indian_numerals.html Islamic mathematics, in turn, developed and expanded the mathematics known to these civilizations.Adolf Yushkevich (1964). Geschichte der Mathematik im Mittelalter. Teubner, Leipzig. Contemporaneous with but independent of these traditions were the mathematics developed by the Maya civilization of Mexico and Central America, where the concept of zero was given a standard symbol in Maya numerals.
Many Greek and Arabic texts on mathematics were translated into Latin from the 12th century, leading to further development of mathematics in Middle Ages. From ancient times through the Middle Ages, periods of mathematical discovery were often followed by centuries of stagnation.Eves, Howard (1990). History of Mathematics, 6th Edition, "After Pappus, Greek mathematics ceased to be a living study, ..." p. 185; "The Athenian school struggled on against growing opposition from Christians until the latter finally, in A.D. 529, obtained a decree from Emperor Justinian that closed the doors of the school forever." p. 186; "The period starting with the fall of the Roman Empire, in the middle of the fifth century, and extending into the eleventh century is known in Europe as the Dark Ages... Schooling became almost nonexistent." p. 258. Beginning in Renaissance Italy in the 15th century, new mathematical developments, interacting with new scientific discoveries, were made at an increasing pace that continues through the present day. This includes the groundbreaking work of both Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in the development of infinitesimal calculus during the 17th century and following discoveries of German mathematicians like Carl Friedrich Gauss and David Hilbert.
The use of yarn by some 40,000 years ago at a site in Abri du Maras in the south of France suggests they knew basic concepts in mathematics. The Ishango bone, found near the headwaters of the Nile river (northeastern Congo), may be more than 20,000 years old and consists of a series of marks carved in three columns running the length of the bone. Common interpretations are that the Ishango bone shows either a tally of the earliest known demonstration of of or a six-month lunar calendar.Marshack, Alexander (1991). The Roots of Civilization, Colonial Hill, Mount Kisco, NY. Peter Rudman argues that the development of the concept of prime numbers could only have come about after the concept of division, which he dates to after 10,000 BC, with prime numbers probably not being understood until about 500 BC. He also writes that "no attempt has been made to explain why a tally of something should exhibit multiples of two, prime numbers between 10 and 20, and some numbers that are almost multiples of 10." The Ishango bone, according to scholar Alexander Marshack, may have influenced the later development of mathematics in Egypt as, like some entries on the Ishango bone, Egyptian arithmetic also made use of multiplication by 2; this however, is disputed.Marshack, A. (1972). The Roots of Civilization: the Cognitive Beginning of Man's First Art, Symbol and Notation. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Predynastic Egyptians of the 5th millennium BC pictorially represented geometric designs. It has been claimed that monuments in England and Scotland, dating from the 3rd millennium BC, incorporate geometric ideas such as , , and Pythagorean triples in their design.Thom, Alexander; Archie Thom (1988). "The metrology and geometry of Megalithic Man", pp. 132–51 in Ruggles, C. L. N. (ed.), Records in Stone: Papers in memory of Alexander Thom. Cambridge University Press. . All of the above are disputed, however, and the currently oldest undisputed mathematical documents are from Babylonian and dynastic Egyptian sources.
In contrast to the sparsity of sources in Egyptian mathematics, knowledge of Babylonian mathematics is derived from more than 400 clay tablets unearthed since the 1850s. Written in Cuneiform script, tablets were inscribed whilst the clay was moist, and baked hard in an oven or by the heat of the sun. Some of these appear to be graded homework.
The earliest evidence of written mathematics dates back to the ancient , who built the earliest civilization in Mesopotamia. They developed a complex system of metrology from 3000 BC that was chiefly concerned with administrative/financial counting, such as grain allotments, workers, weights of silver, or even liquids, among other things. From around 2500 BC onward, the Sumerians wrote multiplication tables on clay tablets and dealt with geometrical exercises and division problems. The earliest traces of the Babylonian numerals also date back to this period.Melville, Duncan J. (2003). Third Millennium Chronology , Third Millennium Mathematics. St. Lawrence University.
Babylonian mathematics was written using a sexagesimal (base-60) numeral system. From this derives the modern-day usage of 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and 360 (60 × 6) degrees in a circle, as well as the use of seconds and minutes of arc to denote fractions of a degree. It is thought the sexagesimal system was initially used by Sumerian scribes because 60 can be evenly divided by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30, and for scribes (doling out the aforementioned grain allotments, recording weights of silver, etc.) being able to easily calculate by hand was essential, and so a sexagesimal system is pragmatically easier to calculate by hand with; however, there is the possibility that using a sexagesimal system was an ethno-linguistic phenomenon (that might not ever be known), and not a mathematical/practical decision. Also, unlike the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, the Babylonians had a place-value system, where digits written in the left column represented larger values, much as in the decimal system. The power of the Babylonian notational system lay in that it could be used to represent fractions as easily as whole numbers; thus, multiplying two numbers that contained fractions was no different from multiplying integers, similar to modern notation. The notational system of the Babylonians was the best of any civilization until the Renaissance, and its power allowed it to achieve remarkable computational accuracy; for example, the Babylonian tablet YBC 7289 gives an approximation of accurate to five decimal places. The Babylonians lacked, however, an equivalent of the decimal point, and so the place value of a symbol often had to be inferred from the context. By the Seleucid period, the Babylonians had developed a zero symbol as a placeholder for empty positions; however, it was only used for intermediate positions. This zero sign does not appear in terminal positions; thus, the Babylonians came close but did not develop a true place value system.
Other topics covered by Babylonian mathematics include fractions, algebra, quadratic and cubic equations, and the calculation of and their reciprocal tuple. The tablets also include multiplication tables and methods for solving linear equation, quadratic equations, and , a remarkable achievement for the time. Tablets from the Old Babylonian period also contain the earliest known statement of the Pythagorean theorem. However, as with Egyptian mathematics, Babylonian mathematics shows no awareness of the difference between exact and approximate solutions, or the solvability of a problem, and most importantly, no explicit statement of the need for proofs or logical principles.
The most extensive Egyptian mathematical text is the Rhind papyrus (sometimes also called the Ahmes Papyrus after its author), dated to c. 1650 BC but likely a copy of an older document from the Middle Kingdom of about 2000–1800 BC. It is an instruction manual for students in arithmetic and geometry. In addition to giving area formulas and methods for multiplication, division and working with unit fractions, it also contains evidence of other mathematical knowledge, Egyptian Unit Fractions at MathPages including composite number and ; arithmetic mean, geometric mean and ; and simplistic understandings of both the Sieve of Eratosthenes and Perfect number (namely, that of the number 6). Egyptian Unit Fractions It also shows how to solve first order as well as arithmetic and geometric series.
Another significant Egyptian mathematical text is the Moscow papyrus, also from the Middle Kingdom period, dated to c. 1890 BC. It consists of what are today called word problems or story problems, which were apparently intended as entertainment. One problem is considered to be of particular importance because it gives a method for finding the volume of a frustum (truncated pyramid).
Finally, the Berlin Papyrus 6619 (c. 1800 BC) shows that ancient Egyptians could solve a second-order algebraic equation.
Greek mathematics was much more sophisticated than the mathematics that had been developed by earlier cultures. All surviving records of pre-Greek mathematics show the use of inductive reasoning, that is, repeated observations used to establish rules of thumb. Greek mathematicians, by contrast, used deductive reasoning. The Greeks used logic to derive conclusions from definitions and axioms, and used mathematical rigor to prove them.Bernal, Martin (2000). "Animadversions on the Origins of Western Science", pp. 72–83 in Michael H. Shank, ed. The Scientific Enterprise in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 75.
Greek mathematics is thought to have begun with Thales of Miletus (c. 624–c.546 BC) and Pythagoras of Samos (c. 582–c. 507 BC). Although the extent of the influence is disputed, they were probably inspired by Egyptian and Babylonian mathematics. According to legend, Pythagoras traveled to Egypt to learn mathematics, geometry, and astronomy from Egyptian priests.
Thales used geometry to solve problems such as calculating the height of pyramids and the distance of ships from the shore. He is credited with the first use of deductive reasoning applied to geometry, by deriving four corollaries to Thales' Theorem. As a result, he has been hailed as the first true mathematician and the first known individual to whom a mathematical discovery has been attributed. Pythagoras established the Pythagoreans, whose doctrine it was that mathematics ruled the universe and whose motto was "All is number". It was the Pythagoreans who coined the term "mathematics", and with whom the study of mathematics for its own sake begins. The Pythagoreans are credited with the first proof of the Pythagorean theorem,Eves, Howard (1990). An Introduction to the History of Mathematics, Saunders, . though the statement of the theorem has a long history, and with the proof of the existence of irrational numbers. Although he was preceded by the Babylonians, Indians and the Chinese, the Neopythagorean mathematician Nicomachus (60–120 AD) provided one of the earliest Greco-Roman multiplication tables, whereas the oldest extant Greek multiplication table is found on a wax tablet dated to the 1st century AD (now found in the British Museum).David E. Smith (1958), History of Mathematics, Volume I: General Survey of the History of Elementary Mathematics, New York: Dover Publications (a reprint of the 1951 publication), , pp. 58, 129. The association of the Neopythagoreans with the Western invention of the multiplication table is evident in its later Middle Ages name: the mensa Pythagorica.Smith, David E. (1958). History of Mathematics, Volume I: General Survey of the History of Elementary Mathematics, New York: Dover Publications (a reprint of the 1951 publication), , p. 129.
Plato (428/427 BC – 348/347 BC) is important in the history of mathematics for inspiring and guiding others. His Platonic Academy, in Athens, became the mathematical center of the world in the 4th century BC, and it was from this school that the leading mathematicians of the day, such as Eudoxus of Cnidus (c. 390 - c. 340 BC), came. Plato also discussed the foundations of mathematics, clarified some of the definitions (e.g. that of a line as "breadthless length").
Eudoxus developed the method of exhaustion, a precursor of modern Integral and a theory of ratios that avoided the problem of incommensurable magnitudes. The former allowed the calculations of areas and volumes of curvilinear figures, while the latter enabled subsequent geometers to make significant advances in geometry. Though he made no specific technical mathematical discoveries, Aristotle (384–) contributed significantly to the development of mathematics by laying the foundations of logic.
In the 3rd century BC, the premier center of mathematical education and research was the Musaeum of Alexandria. It was there that Euclid () taught, and wrote the Elements, widely considered the most successful and influential textbook of all time. The Elements introduced mathematical rigor through the axiomatic method and is the earliest example of the format still used in mathematics today, that of definition, axiom, theorem, and proof. Although most of the contents of the Elements were already known, Euclid arranged them into a single, coherent logical framework. The Elements was known to all educated people in the West up through the middle of the 20th century and its contents are still taught in geometry classes today.Eves, Howard (1990). An Introduction to the History of Mathematics, Saunders. p. 141: "No work, except The Bible, has been more widely used..." In addition to the familiar theorems of Euclidean geometry, the Elements was meant as an introductory textbook to all mathematical subjects of the time, such as number theory, algebra and solid geometry, including proofs that the square root of two is irrational and that there are infinitely many prime numbers. Euclid also wrote extensively on other subjects, such as conic sections, optics, spherical geometry, and mechanics, but only half of his writings survive.
Archimedes (–212 BC) of Syracuse, widely considered the greatest mathematician of antiquity, used the method of exhaustion to calculate the area under the arc of a parabola with the summation of an infinite series, in a manner not too dissimilar from modern calculus. He also showed one could use the method of exhaustion to calculate the value of π with as much precision as desired, and obtained the most accurate value of π then known, . He also studied the spiral bearing his name, obtained formulas for the of surfaces of revolution (paraboloid, ellipsoid, hyperboloid), and an ingenious method of exponentiation for expressing very large numbers. While he is also known for his contributions to physics and several advanced mechanical devices, Archimedes himself placed far greater value on the products of his thought and general mathematical principles. He regarded as his greatest achievement his finding of the surface area and volume of a sphere, which he obtained by proving these are 2/3 the surface area and volume of a cylinder circumscribing the sphere.
Apollonius of Perga (–190 BC) made significant advances to the study of conic sections, showing that one can obtain all three varieties of conic section by varying the angle of the plane that cuts a double-napped cone. He also coined the terminology in use today for conic sections, namely parabola ("place beside" or "comparison"), "ellipse" ("deficiency"), and "hyperbola" ("a throw beyond"). His work Conics is one of the best known and preserved mathematical works from antiquity, and in it he derives many theorems concerning conic sections that would prove invaluable to later mathematicians and astronomers studying planetary motion, such as Isaac Newton. While neither Apollonius nor any other Greek mathematicians made the leap to coordinate geometry, Apollonius' treatment of curves is in some ways similar to the modern treatment, and some of his work seems to anticipate the development of analytical geometry by Descartes some 1800 years later.
Around the same time, Eratosthenes of Cyrene (–194 BC) devised the Sieve of Eratosthenes for finding prime numbers. The 3rd century BC is generally regarded as the "Golden Age" of Greek mathematics, with advances in pure mathematics henceforth in relative decline. Nevertheless, in the centuries that followed significant advances were made in applied mathematics, most notably trigonometry, largely to address the needs of astronomers. Hipparchus of Nicaea (–120 BC) is considered the founder of trigonometry for compiling the first known trigonometric table, and to him is also due the systematic use of the 360 degree circle. Heron of Alexandria (–70 AD) is credited with Heron's formula for finding the area of a scalene triangle and with being the first to recognize the possibility of negative numbers possessing square roots.S.C. Roy. Complex numbers: lattice simulation and zeta function applications, p. 1 [4]. Harwood Publishing, 2007, 131 pages. Menelaus of Alexandria () pioneered spherical trigonometry through Menelaus' theorem. The most complete and influential trigonometric work of antiquity is the Almagest of Claudius Ptolemy (–168), a landmark astronomical treatise whose trigonometric tables would be used by astronomers for the next thousand years. Ptolemy is also credited with Ptolemy's theorem for deriving trigonometric quantities, and the most accurate value of π outside of China until the medieval period, 3.1416.
Following a period of stagnation after Ptolemy, the period between 250 and 350 AD is sometimes referred to as the "Silver Age" of Greek mathematics. During this period, Diophantus made significant advances in algebra, particularly indeterminate analysis, which is also known as "Diophantine analysis". The study of Diophantine equations and Diophantine approximations is a significant area of research to this day. His main work was the Arithmetica, a collection of 150 algebraic problems dealing with exact solutions to determinate and indeterminate equations. The Arithmetica had a significant influence on later mathematicians, such as Pierre de Fermat, who arrived at his famous Last Theorem after trying to generalize a problem he had read in the Arithmetica (that of dividing a square into two squares). Diophantus also made significant advances in notation, the Arithmetica being the first instance of algebraic symbolism and syncopation.
Among the last great Greek mathematicians is Pappus of Alexandria (4th century AD). He is known for his hexagon theorem and centroid theorem, as well as the Pappus configuration and Pappus graph. His Collection is a major source of knowledge on Greek mathematics as most of it has survived. Pappus is considered the last major innovator in Greek mathematics, with subsequent work consisting mostly of commentaries on earlier work.
The first woman mathematician recorded was Hypatia of Alexandria (AD 350–415), who wrote many works on applied mathematics. Because of a political dispute, the Christian community in Alexandria had her stripped publicly and executed. Her death is sometimes taken as the end of the era of the Alexandrian Greek mathematics, although work did continue in Athens for another century with figures such as Proclus, Simplicius and Eutocius. Although Proclus and Simplicius were more philosophers than mathematicians, their commentaries on earlier works are valuable sources on Greek mathematics. The closure of the neo-Platonic Platonic Academy by the emperor Justinian in 529 AD is traditionally held as marking the end of the era of Greek mathematics, although the Greek tradition continued unbroken in the Byzantine empire with mathematicians such as Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus, the architects of the Hagia Sophia. Nevertheless, Byzantine mathematics consisted mostly of commentaries, with little in the way of innovation, and the centers of mathematical innovation were to be found elsewhere by this time.
Using calculation, Romans were adept at both instigating and detecting financial fraud, as well as managing taxes for the treasury. Siculus Flaccus, one of the Roman gromatici (i.e. land surveyor), wrote the Categories of Fields, which aided Roman surveyors in measuring the of allotted lands and territories. Aside from managing trade and taxes, the Romans also regularly applied mathematics to solve problems in engineering, including the erection of architecture such as Roman bridge, Roman roads, and preparation for military campaigns. Roman art such as , inspired by previous Greek designs, created illusionist geometric patterns and rich, detailed scenes that required precise measurements for each tessera tile, the opus tessellatum pieces on average measuring eight millimeters square and the finer opus vermiculatum pieces having an average surface of four millimeters square.
The creation of the Roman calendar also necessitated basic mathematics. The first calendar allegedly dates back to 8th century BC during the Roman Kingdom and included 356 days plus a leap year every other year. In contrast, the lunar calendar of the Republican era contained 355 days, roughly ten-and-one-fourth days shorter than the solar year, a discrepancy that was solved by adding an extra month into the calendar after the 23rd of February. This calendar was supplanted by the Julian calendar, a solar calendar organized by Julius Caesar (100–44 BC) and devised by Sosigenes of Alexandria to include a leap day every four years in a 365-day cycle. This calendar, which contained an error of 11 minutes and 14 seconds, was later corrected by the Gregorian calendar organized by Pope Gregory XIII (), virtually the same solar calendar used in modern times as the international standard calendar.
At roughly the same time, the Han Chinese and the Romans both invented the wheeled odometer device for measuring traveled, the Roman model first described by the Roman civil engineer and architect Vitruvius (). The device was used at least until the reign of emperor Commodus (), but its design seems to have been lost until experiments were made during the 15th century in Western Europe. Perhaps relying on similar gear-work and Roman technology found in the Antikythera mechanism, the odometer of Vitruvius featured chariot wheels measuring 4 feet (1.2 m) in diameter turning four-hundred times in one Roman mile (roughly 4590 ft/1400 m). With each revolution, a pin-and-axle device engaged a 400-tooth cogwheel that turned a second gear responsible for dropping pebbles into a box, each pebble representing one mile traversed.
Of particular note is the use in Chinese mathematics of a decimal positional notation system, the so-called "rod numerals" in which distinct ciphers were used for numbers between 1 and 10, and additional ciphers for powers of ten. Thus, the number 123 would be written using the symbol for "1", followed by the symbol for "100", then the symbol for "2" followed by the symbol for "10", followed by the symbol for "3". This was the most advanced number system in the world at the time, apparently in use several centuries before the common era and well before the development of the Indian numeral system. Counting rods allowed the representation of numbers as large as desired and allowed calculations to be carried out on the suanpan, or Chinese abacus. The date of the invention of the suan pan is not certain, but the earliest written mention dates from AD 190, in Xu Yue's Supplementary Notes on the Art of Figures.
The oldest extant work on geometry in China comes from the philosophical Mohism canon , compiled by the followers of Mozi (470–390 BC). The Mo Jing described various aspects of many fields associated with physical science, and provided a small number of geometrical theorems as well. It also defined the concepts of circumference, diameter, radius, and volume.
In 212 BC, the Emperor Qin Shi Huang commanded all books in the Qin Empire other than officially sanctioned ones be burned. This decree was not universally obeyed, but as a consequence of this order little is known about ancient Chinese mathematics before this date. After the book burning of 212 BC, the Han dynasty (202 BC–220 AD) produced works of mathematics which presumably expanded on works that are now lost. The most important of these is The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art, the full title of which appeared by AD 179, but existed in part under other titles beforehand. It consists of 246 word problems involving agriculture, business, employment of geometry to figure height spans and dimension ratios for Chinese pagoda towers, engineering, surveying, and includes material on . It created mathematical proof for the Pythagorean theorem, and a mathematical formula for Gaussian elimination. The treatise also provides values of π, which Chinese mathematicians originally approximated as 3 until Liu Xin (d. 23 AD) provided a figure of 3.1457 and subsequently Zhang Heng (78–139) approximated pi as 3.1724, as well as 3.162 by taking the square root of 10. Liu Hui commented on the Nine Chapters in the 3rd century AD and gave a value of π accurate to 5 decimal places (i.e. 3.14159). Though more of a matter of computational stamina than theoretical insight, in the 5th century AD Zu Chongzhi computed the value of π to seven decimal places (between 3.1415926 and 3.1415927), which remained the most accurate value of π for almost the next 1000 years. He also established a method which would later be called Cavalieri's principle to find the volume of a sphere. Extract of p. 27
The high-water mark of Chinese mathematics occurred in the 13th century during the latter half of the Song dynasty (960–1279), with the development of Chinese algebra. The most important text from that period is the Precious Mirror of the Four Elements by Zhu Shijie (1249–1314), dealing with the solution of simultaneous higher order algebraic equations using a method similar to Horner's method. The Precious Mirror also contains a diagram of Pascal's triangle with coefficients of binomial expansions through the eighth power, though both appear in Chinese works as early as 1100. The Chinese also made use of the complex combinatorial diagram known as the magic square and magic circles, described in ancient times and perfected by Yang Hui (AD 1238–1298).
Even after European mathematics began to flourish during the Renaissance, European and Chinese mathematics were separate traditions, with significant Chinese mathematical output in decline from the 13th century onwards. Jesuit missionaries such as Matteo Ricci carried mathematical ideas back and forth between the two cultures from the 16th to 18th centuries, though at this point far more mathematical ideas were entering China than leaving.
Japanese mathematics, Korean numerals, and Vietnamese mathematics are traditionally viewed as stemming from Chinese mathematics and belonging to the Confucian-based East Asian cultural sphere. Korean and Japanese mathematics were heavily influenced by the algebraic works produced during China's Song dynasty, whereas Vietnamese mathematics was heavily indebted to popular works of China's Ming dynasty (1368–1644). For instance, although Vietnamese mathematical treatises were written in either Chinese or the native Vietnamese Chữ Nôm script, all of them followed the Chinese format of presenting a collection of problems with for solving them, followed by numerical answers. Mathematics in Vietnam and Korea were mostly associated with the professional court bureaucracy of mathematicians and astronomers, whereas in Japan it was more prevalent in the realm of .
The oldest extant mathematical records from India are the Sulba Sutras (dated variously between the 8th century BC and the 2nd century AD), appendices to religious texts which give simple rules for constructing altars of various shapes, such as squares, rectangles, parallelograms, and others. As with Egypt, the preoccupation with temple functions points to an origin of mathematics in religious ritual. The Sulba Sutras give methods for constructing a circle with approximately the same area as a given square, which imply several different approximations of the value of π. In addition, they compute the square root of 2 to several decimal places, list Pythagorean triples, and give a statement of the Pythagorean theorem. All of these results are present in Babylonian mathematics, indicating Mesopotamian influence. It is not known to what extent the Sulba Sutras influenced later Indian mathematicians. As in China, there is a lack of continuity in Indian mathematics; significant advances are separated by long periods of inactivity.
Pāṇini (c. 5th century BC) formulated the rules for Sanskrit grammar. His notation was similar to modern mathematical notation, and used metarules, transformations, and recursion. Pingala (roughly 3rd–1st centuries BC) in his treatise of prosody uses a device corresponding to a binary numeral system. (2025). 9780849371899, CRC Press. ISBN 9780849371899Anglin, W. S. and J. Lambek (1995). The Heritage of Thales, Springer, His discussion of the combinatorics of meters corresponds to an elementary version of the binomial theorem. Pingala's work also contains the basic ideas of (called mātrāmeru).
The next significant mathematical documents from India after the Sulba Sutras are the Siddhantas, astronomical treatises from the 4th and 5th centuries AD (Gupta period) showing strong Hellenistic influence. They are significant in that they contain the first instance of trigonometric relations based on the half-chord, as is the case in modern trigonometry, rather than the full chord, as was the case in Ptolemaic trigonometry. Through a series of translation errors, the words "sine" and "cosine" derive from the Sanskrit "jiya" and "kojiya".
Around 500 AD, Aryabhata wrote the Aryabhatiya, a slim volume, written in verse, intended to supplement the rules of calculation used in astronomy and mathematical mensuration, though with no feeling for logic or deductive methodology. It is in the Aryabhatiya that the decimal place-value system first appears. Several centuries later, the Muslim mathematician Abu Rayhan Biruni described the Aryabhatiya as a "mix of common pebbles and costly crystals".
In the 7th century, Brahmagupta identified the Brahmagupta theorem, Brahmagupta's identity and Brahmagupta's formula, and for the first time, in Brahma-sphuta-siddhanta, he lucidly explained the use of zero as both a placeholder and decimal digit, and explained the Hindu–Arabic numeral system. It was from a translation of this Indian text on mathematics (c. 770) that Islamic mathematicians were introduced to this numeral system, which they adapted as Arabic numerals. Islamic scholars carried knowledge of this number system to Europe by the 12th century, and it has now displaced all older number systems throughout the world. Various symbol sets are used to represent numbers in the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, all of which evolved from the . Each of the roughly dozen major scripts of India has its own numeral glyphs. In the 10th century, Halayudha's commentary on Pingala's work contains a study of the Fibonacci sequence and Pascal's triangle.
In the 12th century, Bhāskara II,Plofker 2009 182–207 who lived in southern India, wrote extensively on all then known branches of mathematics. His work contains mathematical objects equivalent or approximately equivalent to infinitesimals, the mean value theorem and the derivative of the sine function although he did not develop the notion of a derivative.Plofker 2009 pp. 197–98; George Gheverghese Joseph, The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of Mathematics, Penguin Books, London, 1991 pp. 298–300; Takao Hayashi, "Indian Mathematics", pp. 118–30 in Companion History of the History and Philosophy of the Mathematical Sciences, ed. I. Grattan. Guinness, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1994, p. 126. In the 14th century, Narayana Pandita completed his Ganita Kaumudi.
Also in the 14th century, Madhava of Sangamagrama, the founder of the Kerala School of Mathematics, found the Madhava–Leibniz series and obtained from it a transformed series, whose first 21 terms he used to compute the value of π as 3.14159265359. Madhava also found the Madhava-Gregory series to determine the arctangent, the Madhava-Newton power series to determine sine and cosine and Taylor series for sine and cosine functions.Plofker 2009 pp. 217–53. In the 16th century, Jyesthadeva consolidated many of the Kerala School's developments and theorems in the Yukti-bhāṣā.
"Arabic became the language of scholarship in science and philosophy in the 9th century when the ‘translation movement’ saw concerted work on translations of Greek, Indian, Persian and Chinese, medical, philosophical and scientific texts", p. 811.
In the 9th century, the Persian mathematician Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī wrote an important book on the Hindu–Arabic numerals and one on methods for solving equations. His book On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals, written about 825, along with the work of Al-Kindi, were instrumental in spreading Indian mathematics and Indian numerals to the West. The word algorithm is derived from the Latinization of his name, Algoritmi, and the word algebra from the title of one of his works, Al-Kitāb al-mukhtaṣar fī hīsāb al-ğabr wa’l-muqābala ( The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing). He gave an exhaustive explanation for the algebraic solution of quadratic equations with positive roots, "The six cases of equations given above exhaust all possibilities for linear and quadratic equations having positive root. So systematic and exhaustive was al-Khwārizmī's exposition that his readers must have had little difficulty in mastering the solutions." and he was the first to teach algebra in an elementary form and for its own sake.Gandz and Saloman (1936). "The sources of Khwarizmi's algebra", Osiris i, pp. 263–77: "In a sense, Khwarizmi is more entitled to be called "the father of algebra" than Diophantus because Khwarizmi is the first to teach algebra in an elementary form and for its own sake, Diophantus is primarily concerned with the theory of numbers". He also discussed the fundamental method of "reduction" and "balancing", referring to the transposition of subtracted terms to the other side of an equation, that is, the cancellation of like terms on opposite sides of the equation. This is the operation which al-Khwārizmī originally described as al-jabr. "It is not certain just what the terms al-jabr and muqabalah mean, but the usual interpretation is similar to that implied in the translation above. The word al-jabr presumably meant something like "restoration" or "completion" and seems to refer to the transposition of subtracted terms to the other side of an equation; the word muqabalah is said to refer to "reduction" or "balancing" – that is, the cancellation of like terms on opposite sides of the equation." His algebra was also no longer concerned "with a series of problems to be resolved, but an exposition which starts with primitive terms in which the combinations must give all possible prototypes for equations, which henceforward explicitly constitute the true object of study." He also studied an equation for its own sake and "in a generic manner, insofar as it does not simply emerge in the course of solving a problem, but is specifically called on to define an infinite class of problems." (1994). 9780792325659, Springer. ISBN 9780792325659
In Egypt, Abu Kamil extended algebra to the set of irrational numbers, accepting square roots and fourth roots as solutions and coefficients to quadratic equations. He also developed techniques used to solve three non-linear simultaneous equations with three unknown variables. One unique feature of his works was trying to find all the possible solutions to some of his problems, including one where he found 2676 solutions. His works formed an important foundation for the development of algebra and influenced later mathematicians, such as al-Karaji and Fibonacci.
Further developments in algebra were made by Al-Karaji in his treatise al-Fakhri, where he extends the methodology to incorporate integer powers and integer roots of unknown quantities. Something close to a proof by mathematical induction appears in a book written by Al-Karaji around 1000 AD, who used it to prove the binomial theorem, Pascal's triangle, and the sum of integral cubes. The historian of mathematics, F. Woepcke,Woepcke, F. (1853). Extrait du Fakhri, traité d'Algèbre par Abou Bekr Mohammed Ben Alhacan Alkarkhi. Paris. praised Al-Karaji for being "the first who introduced the theory of calculus." Also in the 10th century, Abul Wafa translated the works of Diophantus into Arabic. Ibn al-Haytham was the first mathematician to derive the formula for the sum of the fourth powers, using a method that is readily generalizable for determining the general formula for the sum of any integral powers. He performed an integration in order to find the volume of a paraboloid, and was able to generalize his result for the integrals of up to the fourth degree. He thus came close to finding a general formula for the integrals of polynomials, but he was not concerned with any polynomials higher than the fourth degree.
In the late 11th century, Omar Khayyam wrote Discussions of the Difficulties in Euclid, a book about what he perceived as flaws in Euclid's Elements, especially the parallel postulate. He was also the first to find the general geometric solution to . He was also very influential in calendar reform.
In the 13th century, Nasir al-Din Tusi (Nasireddin) made advances in spherical trigonometry. He also wrote influential work on Euclid's parallel postulate. In the 15th century, Ghiyath al-Kashi computed the value of π to the 16th decimal place. Kashi also had an algorithm for calculating nth roots, which was a special case of the methods given many centuries later by Ruffini and Horner.
Other achievements of Muslim mathematicians during this period include the addition of the decimal point notation to the Arabic numerals, the discovery of all the modern trigonometric functions besides the sine, al-Kindi's introduction of cryptanalysis and frequency analysis, the development of analytic geometry by Ibn al-Haytham, the beginning of algebraic geometry by Omar Khayyam and the development of an algebraic notation by al-Qalasādī.
During the time of the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Empire from the 15th century, the development of Islamic mathematics became stagnant.
Boethius provided a place for mathematics in the curriculum in the 6th century when he coined the term quadrivium to describe the study of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. He wrote De institutione arithmetica, a free translation from the Greek of Nicomachus's Introduction to Arithmetic; De institutione musica, also derived from Greek sources; and a series of excerpts from Euclid's Elements. His works were theoretical, rather than practical, and were the basis of mathematical study until the recovery of Greek and Arabic mathematical works.Caldwell, John (1981). "The De Institutione Arithmetica and the De Institutione Musica", pp. 135–54 in Margaret Gibson, ed., Boethius: His Life, Thought, and Influence, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).Folkerts, Menso (1970). "Boethius" Geometrie II, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag.
In the 12th century, European scholars traveled to Spain and Sicily seeking scientific Arabic texts, including al-Khwārizmī's The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing, translated into Latin by Robert of Chester, and the complete text of Euclid's Elements, translated in various versions by Adelard of Bath, Herman of Carinthia, and Gerard of Cremona.Marie-Thérèse d'Alverny, "Translations and Translators", pp. 421–62 in Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable, Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982).Beaujouan, Guy. "The Transformation of the Quadrivium", pp. 463–87 in Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable, Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982. These and other new sources sparked a renewal of mathematics.
Leonardo of Pisa, now known as Fibonacci, serendipitously learned about the Hindu–Arabic numerals on a trip to what is now Béjaïa, Algeria with his merchant father. (Europe was still using Roman numerals.) There, he observed a system of arithmetic (specifically algorism) which due to the positional notation of Hindu–Arabic numerals was much more efficient and greatly facilitated commerce. Leonardo wrote Liber Abaci in 1202 (updated in 1254) introducing the technique to Europe and beginning a long period of popularizing it. The book also brought to Europe what is now known as the Fibonacci sequence (known to Indian mathematicians for hundreds of years before that)Singh, Parmanand (1985). "The So-called Fibonacci numbers in ancient and medieval India", Historia Mathematica, 12 (3): 229–44, doi:10.1016/0315-0860(85)90021-7 which Fibonacci used as an unremarkable example.
The 14th century saw the development of new mathematical concepts to investigate a wide range of problems.Grant, Edward and John E. Murdoch, eds. (1987). Mathematics and Its Applications to Science and Natural Philosophy in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . One important contribution was development of mathematics of local motion. Thomas Bradwardine proposed that speed (V) increases in arithmetic proportion as the ratio of force (F) to resistance (R) increases in geometric proportion. Bradwardine expressed this by a series of specific examples, but although the logarithm had not yet been conceived, we can express his conclusion anachronistically by writing: V = log (F/R).Clagett, Marshall (1961). The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 421–40. Bradwardine's analysis is an example of transferring a mathematical technique used by al-Kindi and Arnald of Villanova to quantify the nature of compound medicines to a different physical problem.Murdoch, John E. (1969). " Mathesis in Philosophiam Scholasticam Introducta: The Rise and Development of the Application of Mathematics in Fourteenth Century Philosophy and Theology", in Arts libéraux et philosophie au Moyen Âge (Montréal: Institut d'Études Médiévales), pp. 224–27.
One of the 14th-century Oxford Calculators, William of Heytesbury, lacking differential calculus and the concept of limits, proposed to measure instantaneous speed "by the path that would be described by a if... it were moved uniformly at the same degree of speed with which it is moved in that given instant".Clagett, Marshall (1961). The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 210, 214–15, 236.
Heytesbury and others mathematically determined the distance covered by a body undergoing uniformly accelerated motion (today solved by integration), stating that "a moving body uniformly acquiring or losing that increment of will traverse in some given time a distance completely equal to that which it would traverse if it were moving continuously through the same time with the mean degree of".Clagett, Marshall (1961). The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, p. 284.
Nicole Oresme at the University of Paris and the Italian Giovanni di Casali independently provided graphical demonstrations of this relationship, asserting that the area under the line depicting the constant acceleration, represented the total distance traveled.Clagett, Marshall (1961) The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 332–45, 382–91. In a later mathematical commentary on Euclid's Elements, Oresme made a more detailed general analysis in which he demonstrated that a body will acquire in each successive increment of time an increment of any quality that increases as the odd numbers. Since Euclid had demonstrated the sum of the odd numbers are the square numbers, the total quality acquired by the body increases as the square of the time.Oresme, Nicole. "Questions on the Geometry of Euclid" Q. 14, pp. 560–65, in Marshall Clagett, ed., Nicole Oresme and the Medieval Geometry of Qualities and Motions. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968.
Piero della Francesca (c. 1415–1492) wrote books on solid geometry and linear perspective, including De Prospectiva Pingendi (On Perspective for Painting), Trattato d’Abaco (Abacus Treatise), and De quinque corporibus regularibus (On the Five Regular Solids).della Francesca, Piero (1942). De Prospectiva Pingendi, ed. G. Nicco Fasola, 2 vols., Florence.della Francesca, Piero. Trattato d'Abaco, ed. G. Arrighi, Pisa (1970).della Francesca, Piero (1916). L'opera "De corporibus regularibus" di Pietro Franceschi detto della Francesca usurpata da Fra Luca Pacioli, ed. G. Mancini, Rome.
Luca Pacioli's Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalità (Italian: "Review of Arithmetic, Geometry, Ratio and Proportion") was first printed and published in Venice in 1494. It included a 27-page treatise on bookkeeping, "Particularis de Computis et Scripturis" (Italian: "Details of Calculation and Recording"). It was written primarily for, and sold mainly to, merchants who used the book as a reference text, as a source of pleasure from the mathematical puzzles it contained, and to aid the education of their sons.Sangster, Alan; Greg Stoner & Patricia McCarthy: "The market for Luca Pacioli’s Summa Arithmetica" (Accounting, Business & Financial History Conference, Cardiff, September 2007) pp. 1–2. In Summa Arithmetica, Pacioli introduced symbols for plus and minus for the first time in a printed book, symbols that became standard notation in Italian Renaissance mathematics. Summa Arithmetica was also the first known book printed in Italy to contain algebra. Pacioli obtained many of his ideas from Piero Della Francesca whom he plagiarized.
In Italy, during the first half of the 16th century, Scipione del Ferro and Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia discovered solutions for . Gerolamo Cardano published them in his 1545 book Ars Magna, together with a solution for the , discovered by his student Lodovico Ferrari. In 1572 Rafael Bombelli published his L'Algebra in which he showed how to deal with the imaginary number that could appear in Cardano's formula for solving cubic equations.
Simon Stevin's De Thiende ('the art of tenths'), first published in Dutch in 1585, contained the first systematic treatment of decimal notation in Europe, which influenced all later work on the real number system.Roshdi Rashed (1996) Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, chapter 10: Numeration and Arithmetic, page 315, Routledge
Driven by the demands of navigation and the growing need for accurate maps of large areas, trigonometry grew to be a major branch of mathematics. Bartholomaeus Pitiscus was the first to use the word, publishing his Trigonometria in 1595. Regiomontanus's table of sines and cosines was published in 1533.
During the Renaissance the desire of artists to represent the natural world realistically, together with the rediscovered philosophy of the Greeks, led artists to study mathematics. They were also the engineers and architects of that time, and so had need of mathematics in any case. The art of painting in perspective, and the developments in geometry that were involved, were studied intensely.
Building on earlier work by many predecessors, Isaac Newton discovered the laws of physics that explain Kepler's Laws, and brought together the concepts now known as calculus. Independently, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, developed calculus and much of the calculus notation still in use today. He also refined the binary number system, which is the foundation of nearly all digital (electronic, solid-state, Logic gate) .
Science and mathematics had become an international endeavor, which would soon spread over the entire world.Eves, Howard (1990). An Introduction to the History of Mathematics, Saunders. , p. 379, "... the concepts of calculus... (are) so far reaching and have exercised such an impact on the modern world that it is perhaps correct to say that without some knowledge of them a person today can scarcely claim to be well educated."
In addition to the application of mathematics to the studies of the heavens, applied mathematics began to expand into new areas, with the correspondence of Pierre de Fermat and Blaise Pascal. Pascal and Fermat set the groundwork for the investigations of probability theory and the corresponding rules of combinatorics in their discussions over a game of gambling. Pascal, with his wager, attempted to use the newly developing probability theory to argue for a life devoted to religion, on the grounds that even if the probability of success was small, the rewards were infinite. In some sense, this foreshadowed the development of utility theory in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Other important European mathematicians of the 18th century included Joseph Louis Lagrange, who did pioneering work in number theory, algebra, differential calculus, and the calculus of variations, and Pierre-Simon Laplace, who, in the age of Napoleon, did important work on the foundations of celestial mechanics and on statistics.
This century saw the development of the two forms of non-Euclidean geometry, where the parallel postulate of Euclidean geometry no longer holds. The Russian mathematician Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky and his rival, the Hungarian mathematician János Bolyai, independently defined and studied hyperbolic geometry, where uniqueness of parallels no longer holds. In this geometry the sum of angles in a triangle add up to less than 180°. Elliptic geometry was developed later in the 19th century by the German mathematician Bernhard Riemann; here no parallel can be found and the angles in a triangle add up to more than 180°. Riemann also developed Riemannian geometry, which unifies and vastly generalizes the three types of geometry, and he defined the concept of a manifold, which generalizes the ideas of and surfaces, and set the mathematical foundations for the theory of general relativity.
The 19th century saw the beginning of a great deal of abstract algebra. Hermann Grassmann in Germany gave a first version of , William Rowan Hamilton in Ireland developed noncommutative algebra.The British mathematician George Boole devised an algebra that soon evolved into what is now called Boolean algebra, in which the only numbers were 0 and 1. Boolean algebra is the starting point of mathematical logic and has important applications in electrical engineering and computer science.Mari, C. (2012). George Boole. Great Lives from History: Scientists & Science, N.PAG. Salem Press. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?AN=
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Also, for the first time, the limits of mathematics were explored. Paolo Ruffini, Niels Henrik Abel, and Évariste Galois proved there is no general algebraic method for solving polynomial equations of degree greater than four (Abel–Ruffini theorem). Other 19th-century mathematicians used this in their proofs that straight edge and compass alone are not sufficient to trisect an arbitrary angle, to construct the side of a cube twice the volume of a given cube, nor to construct a square equal in area to a given circle. Mathematicians had vainly attempted to solve these problems since the ancient Greeks. On the other hand, the limitation of three in geometry was surpassed in the 19th century through considerations of parameter space and hypercomplex numbers.
Abel and Galois's investigations into the solutions of various polynomial equations laid the groundwork for further developments of group theory, and the associated fields of abstract algebra. In the 20th century physicists and other scientists have seen group theory as the ideal way to study symmetry. (2025). 012457551X, Academic Press. 012457551X
In the later 19th century, Georg Cantor established the first foundations of set theory, which enabled the rigorous treatment of the notion of infinity and has become the common language of nearly all mathematics. Cantor's set theory, and the rise of mathematical logic in the hands of Peano, L.E.J. Brouwer, David Hilbert, Bertrand Russell, and A.N. Whitehead, initiated a long running debate on the foundations of mathematics.
The 19th century saw the founding of a number of national mathematical societies: the London Mathematical Society in 1865, the Société mathématique de France in 1872, the Circolo Matematico di Palermo in 1884, the Edinburgh Mathematical Society in 1883, and the American Mathematical Society in 1888. The first international, special-interest society, the Quaternion Association, was formed in 1899, in the context of a vector controversy. In 1897, Kurt Hensel introduced .
In a 1900 speech to the International Congress of Mathematicians, David Hilbert set out a list of 23 unsolved problems in mathematics. These problems, spanning many areas of mathematics, formed a central focus for much of 20th-century mathematics. 10 have been solved, 7 partially solved, and 2 are still open. The remaining 4 are too loosely formulated to be stated as solved or not.
Notable historical conjectures were finally proven. In 1976, Wolfgang Haken and Kenneth Appel proved the four color theorem, controversial at the time for the use of a computer to do so. Andrew Wiles, building on the work of others, proved Fermat's Last Theorem in 1995. Paul Cohen and Kurt Gödel proved that the continuum hypothesis is independent of (could neither be proved nor disproved from) the ZFC. In 1998, Thomas Callister Hales proved the Kepler conjecture, also using a computer.
Mathematical collaborations of unprecedented size and scope took place. An example is the classification of finite simple groups (also called the "enormous theorem"), whose proof between 1955 and 2004 required 500-odd journal articles by about 100 authors, and filling tens of thousands of pages. A group of French mathematicians, including Jean Dieudonné and André Weil, publishing under the pseudonym "Nicolas Bourbaki", attempted to exposit all of known mathematics as a coherent rigorous whole. The resulting several dozen volumes has had a controversial influence on mathematical education.Maurice Mashaal, 2006. Bourbaki: A Secret Society of Mathematicians. American Mathematical Society. .
Differential geometry came into its own when Albert Einstein used it in general relativity.Spivak, M., 1975. A comprehensive introduction to differential geometry (Vol. 2). Publish or Perish, Incorporated. Entirely new areas of mathematics such as mathematical logic, topology, and John von Neumann's game theory changed the kinds of questions that could be answered by mathematical methods. All kinds of structures were abstracted using axioms and given names like , topological spaces etc. The concept of an abstract structure was itself abstracted and led to category theory. Grothendieck and Serre recast algebraic geometry using sheaf theory. Large advances were made in the qualitative study of dynamical systems that Poincaré had begun in the 1890s. (2025). 9783319528984, Springer International Publishing. ISBN 9783319528984
Measure theory was developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Applications of measures include the Lebesgue integral, Kolmogorov's axiomatisation of probability theory, and ergodic theory. Knot theory greatly expanded.Alexei Sossinsky (2002) Knots, Mathematics with a Twist, Harvard University Press Quantum mechanics aided the development of functional analysis, a branch of mathematics developed by Stefan Banach and his collaborators who formed the Lwów School of Mathematics. Other new areas include Laurent Schwartz's distribution theory, fixed point theory, singularity theory and René Thom's catastrophe theory, model theory, and Mandelbrot's fractals. Lie theory with its and became one of the major areas of study.
Nonstandard analysis, introduced by Abraham Robinson, rehabilitated the infinitesimal approach to calculus, which had fallen into disrepute in favour of the theory of limits, by extending the field of real numbers to the which include infinitesimal and infinite quantities. An even larger number system, the were discovered by John Horton Conway in connection with combinatorial games.
The development and continual improvement of , at first mechanical analog machines and then digital electronic machines, allowed Private industry to deal with larger and larger amounts of data to facilitate mass production and distribution and communication, and new areas of mathematics were developed to deal with this: Alan Turing's computability theory; complexity theory; Derrick Henry Lehmer's use of ENIAC to further number theory and the Lucas–Lehmer primality test; Rózsa Péter's recursive function theory; Claude Shannon's information theory; signal processing; data analysis; optimization and other areas of operations research. In the preceding centuries much mathematical focus was on calculus and continuous functions, but the rise of computing and communication networks led to an increasing importance of discrete concepts and the expansion of combinatorics including graph theory. The speed and data processing abilities of computers also enabled the handling of mathematical problems that were too time-consuming to deal with by pencil and paper calculations, leading to areas such as numerical analysis and computer algebra. Some of the most important methods and of the 20th century are: the simplex algorithm, the fast Fourier transform, error-correcting codes, the Kalman filter from control theory and the RSA algorithm of public-key cryptography.
At the same time, deep insights were made about the limitations to mathematics. In 1929 and 1930, it was proved by Mojżesz Presburger, that the truth or falsity of all statements formulated about the plus either addition or multiplication (but not both), was decidable, i.e. could be determined by some algorithm. In 1931, Kurt Gödel found that this was not the case for the natural numbers plus both addition and multiplication; this system, known as Peano arithmetic, was in fact incomplete. (Peano arithmetic is adequate for a good deal of number theory, including the notion of prime number.) A consequence of Gödel's two incompleteness theorems is that in any mathematical system that includes Peano arithmetic (including all of analysis and geometry), truth necessarily outruns proof, i.e. there are true statements that cannot be proved within the system. Hence mathematics cannot be reduced to mathematical logic, and David Hilbert's dream of making all of mathematics complete and consistent needed to be reformulated. Here: Introduction / Consistency, completeness, Hilbert's program; "Gödel published his work which in some sense completely destroyed Hilbert's program."
One of the more colorful figures in 20th-century mathematics was Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920), an Indian autodidact who conjectured or proved over 3000 theorems, including properties of highly composite numbers, the partition function and its asymptotics, and mock theta functions. He also made major investigations in the areas of , , divergent series, hypergeometric series and prime number theory.
Paul Erdős published more papers than any other mathematician in history, working with hundreds of collaborators. Mathematicians have a game equivalent to the Kevin Bacon Game, which leads to the Erdős number of a mathematician. This describes the "collaborative distance" between a person and Erdős, as measured by joint authorship of mathematical papers.
Emmy Noether has been described by many as the most important woman in the history of mathematics.. She studied the theories of rings, fields, and algebras.
As in most areas of study, the explosion of knowledge in the scientific age has led to specialization: by the end of the century, there were hundreds of specialized areas in mathematics, and the Mathematics Subject Classification was dozens of pages long. More and more mathematical journals were published and, by the end of the century, the development of the World Wide Web led to online publishing.
Most mathematical journals now have online versions as well as print versions, and many online-only journals are launched. There is an increasing drive toward open access publishing, first made popular by arXiv.
Many other important problems have been solved in this century. Examples include the Green–Tao theorem (2004), existence of bounded gaps between arbitrarily large primes (2013), and the modularity theorem (2001). The AKS primality test was published in 2002, which is the first algorithm that can determine whether a number is prime or composite in Time complexity. A proof of Goldbach's weak conjecture was published by Harald Helfgott in 2013; as of 2025, the proof has not yet been fully reviewed. The first Einstein problem was discovered in 2023.
In addition, a lot of work has been done toward long-lasting projects which began in the twentieth century. For example, the classification of finite simple groups was completed in 2008. Similarly, work on the Langlands program has progressed significantly, and there have been proofs of the fundamental lemma (2008), as well as a proposed proof of the geometric Langlands correspondence in 2024.
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