PREHISTORIC

MATHEMATICS
Our prehistoric ancestors would
have had a general sensibility about
amounts, and would have
instinctively known the difference
between, say, one and two
antelopes. But the intellectual leap
from the concrete idea of two things
to the invention of a symbol or word
for the abstract idea of "two" took
many ages to come about.

Even today, there are isolated The Ishango bone, a tally stick from central Africa, dates from about
hunter-gatherer tribes in Amazonia 20,000 years ago
which only have words for "one",
"two" and "many", and others which
only have words for numbers up to five. In the absence of settled agriculture and trade, there is little need
for a formal system of numbers.

Early man kept track of regular occurrences such as the phases of the moon and the seasons. Some of
the very earliest evidence of mankind thinking about numbers is from notched bones in Africa dating back
to 35,000 to 20,000 years ago. But this is really mere counting and tallying rather than mathematics as
such.

Pre-dynastic Egyptians and Sumerians represented geometric designs on their artefacts as early as the
5th millennium BCE, as did some megalithic societies in northern Europe in the 3rd millennium BCE or
before. But this is more art and decoration than the systematic treatment of figures, patterns, forms and
quantities that has come to be considered as mathematics.

Mathematics proper initially developed largely as a response to bureaucratic needs when civilizations
settled and developed agriculture - for the measurement of plots of land, the taxation of individuals, etc -
and this first occurred in the Sumerian and Babylonian civilizations of Mesopotamia (roughly, modern
Iraq) and in ancient Egypt.

According to some authorities, there is evidence of basic arithmetic and geometric notations on the
petroglyphs at Knowth and Newgrange burial mounds in Ireland (dating from about 3500 BCE and 3200
BCE respectively). These utilize a repeated zig-zag glyph for counting, a system which continued to be
used in Britain and Ireland into the 1st millennium BCE. Stonehenge, a Neolithic ceremonial and
astronomical monument in England, which dates from around 2300 BCE, also arguably exhibits examples
of the use of 60 and 360 in the circle measurements, a practice which presumably developed quite
independently of the sexagesimal counting system of the ancient Sumerian and Babylonians.
SUMERIAN/BABYLONIA
N MATHEMATICS
Sumer (a region of Mesopotamia,
modern-day Iraq) was the birthplace
of writing, the wheel, agriculture, the
arch, the plow, irrigation and many
other innovations, and is often
referred to as the Cradle of
Civilization. The Sumerians
developed the earliest known writing
system - a pictographic writing
system known as cuneiform script,
using wedge-shaped characters
inscribed on baked clay tablets -
and this has meant that we actually
have more knowledge of ancient
Sumerian and Babylonian
mathematics than of early Egyptian
mathematics. Indeed, we even have
what appear to school exercises in
arithmetic and geometric problems. Sumerian Clay Cones

As in Egypt, Sumerian mathematics initially developed largely as a response to bureaucratic needs when
their civilization settled and developed agriculture (possibly as early as the 6th millennium BCE) for the
measurement of plots of land, the taxation of individuals, etc. In addition, the Sumerians and Babylonians
needed to describe quite large numbers as they attempted to chart the course of the night sky and
develop their sophisticated lunar calendar.

They were perhaps the first people to assign symbols to groups of objects in an attempt to make the
description of larger numbers easier. They moved from using separate tokens or symbols to represent
sheaves of wheat, jars of oil, etc, to the more abstract use of a symbol for specific numbers of anything.
Starting as early as the 4th millennium BCE, they began using a small clay cone to represent one, a clay
ball for ten, and a large cone for sixty. Over the course of the third millennium, these objects were
replaced by cuneiform equivalents so that numbers could be written with the same stylus that was being
used for the words in the text. A rudimentary model of the abacus was probably in use in Sumeria from as
early as 2700 - 2300 BCE.
Sumerian and Babylonian
mathematics was based on a
sexegesimal, or base 60, numeric
system, which could be counted
physically using the twelve knuckles
on one hand the five fingers on the
other hand. Unlike those of the
Egyptians, Greeks and Romans,
Babylonian numbers used a true
place-value system, where digits
written in the left column
represented larger values, much as
in the modern decimal system,
although of course using base 60
not base 10. Thus, in the
Babylonian system represented
3,600 plus 60 plus 1, or 3,661. Also,
to represent the numbers 1 - 59
within each place value, two distinct Babylonian Numerals
symbols were used, a unit symbol (
) and a ten symbol ( ) which were
combined in a similar way to the familiar system of Roman numerals (e.g. 23 would be shown as ).
Thus, represents 60 plus 23, or 83. However, the number 60 was represented by the same
symbol as the number 1 and, because they lacked an equivalent of the decimal point, the actual place
value of a symbol often had to be inferred from the context.

It has been conjectured that Babylonian advances in mathematics were probably facilitated by the fact
that 60 has many divisors (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30 and 60 - in fact, 60 is the smallest integer
divisible by all integers from 1 to 6), and the continued modern-day usage of of 60 seconds in a minute,
60 minutes in an hour, and 360 (60 x 6) degrees in a circle, are all testaments to the ancient Babylonian
system. It is for similar reasons that 12 (which has factors of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6) has been such a popular
multiple historically (e.g. 12 months, 12 inches, 12 pence, 2 x 12 hours, etc).

The Babylonians also developed another revolutionary mathematical concept, something else that the
Egyptians, Greeks and Romans did not have, a circle character for zero, although its symbol was really
still more of a placeholder than a number in its own right.

We have evidence of the development of a complex system of metrology in Sumer from about 3000 BCE,
and multiplication and reciprocal (division) tables, tables of squares, square roots and cube roots,
geometrical exercises and division problems from around 2600 BCE onwards. Later Babylonian tablets
dating from about 1800 to 1600 BCE cover topics as varied as fractions, algebra, methods for solving
linear, quadratic and even some cubic equations, and the calculation of regular reciprocal pairs (pairs of
number which multiply together to give 60). One Babylonian tablet gives an approximation to √2 accurate
to an astonishing five decimal places. Others list the squares of numbers up to 59, the cubes of numbers
up to 32 as well as tables of compound interest. Yet another gives an estimate for π of 3 1⁄8 (3.125, a
reasonable approximation of the real value of 3.1416).
The idea of square numbers and
quadratic equations (where the
unknown quantity is multiplied by
itself, e.g. x2) naturally arose in the
context of the meaurement of land,
and Babylonian mathematical
tablets give us the first ever
evidence of the solution of quadratic
equations. The Babylonian
approach to solving them usually
revolved around a kind of geometric
game of slicing up and rearranging
shapes, although the use of algebra
and quadratic equations also
appears. At least some of the
examples we have appear to
indicate problem-solving for its own Babylonian Clay tablets from c. 2100 BCE showing a problem concerning
sake rather than in order to resolve the area of an irregular shape
a concrete practical problem.

The Babylonians used geometric shapes in their buildings and design and in dice for the leisure games
which were so popular in their society, such as the ancient game of backgammon. Their geometry
extended to the calculation of the areas of rectangles, triangles and trapezoids, as well as the volumes of
simple shapes such as bricks and cylinders (although not pyramids).

The famous and controversial Plimpton 322 clay tablet, believed to date from around 1800 BCE, suggests
that the Babylonians may well have known the secret of right-angled triangles (that the square of the
hypotenuse equals the sum of the square of the other two sides) many centuries before the Greek
Pythagoras. The tablet appears to list 15 perfect Pythagorean triangles with whole number sides,
although some claim that they were merely academic exercises, and not deliberate manifestations of
Pythagorean triples.
EGYPTIAN
MATHEMATICS
The early Egyptians settled along
the fertile Nile valley as early as
about 6000 BCE, and they began to
record the patterns of lunar phases
and the seasons, both for
agricultural and religious reasons.
The Pharaoh’s surveyors used
measurements based on body parts
(a palm was the width of the hand, a
cubit the measurement from elbow
to fingertips) to measure land and
buildings very early in Egyptian Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic numerals
history, and a decimal numeric
system was developed based on
our ten fingers. The oldest mathematical text from ancient Egypt discovered so far, though, is the Moscow
Papyrus, which dates from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom around 2000 - 1800 BCE.

It is thought that the Egyptians introduced the earliest fully-developed base 10 numeration system at least
as early as 2700 BCE (and probably much early). Written numbers used a stroke for units, a heel-bone
symbol for tens, a coil of rope for hundreds and a lotus plant for thousands, as well as other hieroglyphic
symbols for higher powers of ten up to a million. However, there was no concept of place value, so larger
numbers were rather unwieldy (although a million required just one character, a million minus one
required fifty-four characters).
The Rhind Papyrus, dating from
around 1650 BCE, is a kind of Ancient Egyptian method of multiplication
instruction manual in arithmetic and
geometry, and it gives us explicit
demonstrations of how multiplication and division was carried out at that time. It also contains evidence of
other mathematical knowledge, including unit fractions, composite and prime numbers, arithmetic,
geometric and harmonic means, and how to solve first order linear equations as well as arithmetic and
geometric series. The Berlin Papyrus, which dates from around 1300 BCE, shows that ancient Egyptians
could solve second-order algebraic (quadratic) equations.

Multiplication, for example, was achieved by a process of repeated doubling of the number to be
multiplied on one side and of one on the other, essentially a kind of multiplication of binary factors similar
to that used by modern computers (see the example at right). These corresponding blocks of counters
could then be used as a kind of multiplication reference table: first, the combination of powers of two
which add up to the number to be multiplied by was isolated, and then the corresponding blocks of
counters on the other side yielded the answer. This effectively made use of the concept of binary
numbers, over 3,000 years before Leibniz introduced it into the west, and many more years before the
development of the computer was to fully explore its potential.

Practical problems of trade and the market led to the development of a notation for fractions. The papyri
which have come down to us demonstrate the use of unit fractions based on the symbol of the Eye of
Horus, where each part of the eye represented a different fraction, each half of the previous one (i.e. half,
quarter, eighth, sixteenth, thirty-second, sixty-fourth), so that the total was one-sixty-fourth short of a
whole, the first known example of a geometric series.
Unit fractions could also be used for
simple division sums. For example,
if they needed to divide 3 loaves
among 5 people, they would first
divide two of the loaves into thirds
and the third loaf into fifths, then
they would divide the left over third
from the second loaf into five
pieces. Thus, each person would
receive one-third plus one-fifth plus
one-fifteenth (which totals three-
fifths, as we would expect).

The Egyptians approximated the

area of a circle by using shapes
whose area they did know. They
observed that the area of a circle of
diameter 9 units, for example, was
very close to the area of a square
with sides of 8 units, so that the
area of circles of other diameters
could be obtained by multiplying the
diameter by 8⁄9 and then squaring it.
This gives an effective
approximation of π accurate to
within less than one percent.

The pyramids themselves are

another indication of the
sophistication of Egyptian
mathematics. Setting aside claims
that the pyramids are first known
structures to observe the golden
ratio of 1 : 1.618 (which may have
Ancient Egyptian method of division
occurred for purely aesthetic, and
not mathematical, reasons), there is
certainly evidence that they knew the formula for the volume of a pyramid - 1⁄3 times the height times the
length times the width - as well as of a truncated or clipped pyramid. They were also aware, long before
Pythagoras, of the rule that a triangle with sides 3, 4 and 5 units yields a perfect right angle, and Egyptian
builders used ropes knotted at intervals of 3, 4 and 5 units in order to ensure exact right angles for their
stonework (in fact, the 3-4-5 right triangle is often called "Egyptian").
EGYPTIAN
MATHEMATICS
The early Egyptians settled along
the fertile Nile valley as early as
about 6000 BCE, and they began to
record the patterns of lunar phases
and the seasons, both for
agricultural and religious reasons.
The Pharaoh’s surveyors used
measurements based on body parts
(a palm was the width of the hand, a
cubit the measurement from elbow
to fingertips) to measure land and
buildings very early in Egyptian Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic numerals
history, and a decimal numeric
system was developed based on
our ten fingers. The oldest mathematical text from ancient Egypt discovered so far, though, is the Moscow
Papyrus, which dates from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom around 2000 - 1800 BCE.

It is thought that the Egyptians introduced the earliest fully-developed base 10 numeration system at least
as early as 2700 BCE (and probably much early). Written numbers used a stroke for units, a heel-bone
symbol for tens, a coil of rope for hundreds and a lotus plant for thousands, as well as other hieroglyphic
symbols for higher powers of ten up to a million. However, there was no concept of place value, so larger
numbers were rather unwieldy (although a million required just one character, a million minus one
required fifty-four characters).
The Rhind Papyrus, dating from
around 1650 BCE, is a kind of Ancient Egyptian method of multiplication
instruction manual in arithmetic and
geometry, and it gives us explicit
demonstrations of how multiplication and division was carried out at that time. It also contains evidence of
other mathematical knowledge, including unit fractions, composite and prime numbers, arithmetic,
geometric and harmonic means, and how to solve first order linear equations as well as arithmetic and
geometric series. The Berlin Papyrus, which dates from around 1300 BCE, shows that ancient Egyptians
could solve second-order algebraic (quadratic) equations.

Multiplication, for example, was achieved by a process of repeated doubling of the number to be
multiplied on one side and of one on the other, essentially a kind of multiplication of binary factors similar
to that used by modern computers (see the example at right). These corresponding blocks of counters
could then be used as a kind of multiplication reference table: first, the combination of powers of two
which add up to the number to be multiplied by was isolated, and then the corresponding blocks of
counters on the other side yielded the answer. This effectively made use of the concept of binary
numbers, over 3,000 years before Leibniz introduced it into the west, and many more years before the
development of the computer was to fully explore its potential.

Practical problems of trade and the market led to the development of a notation for fractions. The papyri
which have come down to us demonstrate the use of unit fractions based on the symbol of the Eye of
Horus, where each part of the eye represented a different fraction, each half of the previous one (i.e. half,
quarter, eighth, sixteenth, thirty-second, sixty-fourth), so that the total was one-sixty-fourth short of a
whole, the first known example of a geometric series.
Unit fractions could also be used for
simple division sums. For example, if
they needed to divide 3 loaves
among 5 people, they would first
divide two of the loaves into thirds
and the third loaf into fifths, then
they would divide the left over third
from the second loaf into five pieces.
Thus, each person would receive
one-third plus one-fifth plus one-
fifteenth (which totals three-fifths, as
we would expect).

The Egyptians approximated the

area of a circle by using shapes
whose area they did know. They
observed that the area of a circle of
diameter 9 units, for example, was
very close to the area of a square
with sides of 8 units, so that the area
of circles of other diameters could be
obtained by multiplying the diameter
by 8⁄9 and then squaring it. This gives
an effective approximation of π
accurate to within less than one
percent.

The pyramids themselves are

another indication of the
sophistication of Egyptian
mathematics. Setting aside claims
that the pyramids are first known
structures to observe the golden
ratio of 1 : 1.618 (which may have
Ancient Egyptian method of division
occurred for purely aesthetic, and
not mathematical, reasons), there is
certainly evidence that they knew the formula for the volume of a pyramid - 1⁄3 times the height times the
length times the width - as well as of a truncated or clipped pyramid. They were also aware, long before
Pythagoras, of the rule that a triangle with sides 3, 4 and 5 units yields a perfect right angle, and Egyptian
builders used ropes knotted at intervals of 3, 4 and 5 units in order to ensure exact right angles for their
stonework (in fact, the 3-4-5 right triangle is often called "Egyptian").
GREEK MATHEMATICS
As the Greek empire began to
spread its sphere of influence into
Asia Minor, Mesopotamia and
beyond, the Greeks were smart
enough to adopt and adapt useful
elements from the societies they
conquered. This was as true of their
mathematics as anything else, and
they adopted elements of
mathematics from both the
Babylonians and the Egyptians. But Ancient Greek Herodianic numerals
they soon started to make important
contributions in their own right and,
for the first time, we can acknowledge contributions by individuals. By the Hellenistic period, the Greeks
had presided over one of the most dramatic and important revolutions in mathematical thought of all time.

The ancient Greek numeral system, known as Attic or Herodianic numerals, was fully developed by about
450 BCE, and in regular use possibly as early as the 7th Century BCE. It was a base 10 system similar to
the earlier Egyptian one (and even more similar to the later Roman system), with symbols for 1, 5, 10, 50,
100, 500 and 1,000 repeated as many times needed to represent the desired number. Addition was done
by totalling separately the symbols (1s, 10s, 100s, etc) in the numbers to be added, and multiplication
was a laborious process based on successive doublings (division was based on the inverse of this
process).

But most of Greek mathematics was

based on geometry. Thales, one of
the Seven Sages of Ancient Greece,
who lived on the Ionian coast of
Asian Minor in the first half of the
6th Century BCE, is usually
considered to have been the first to
lay down guidelines for the abstract
development of geometry, although
what we know of his work (such as
on similar and right triangles) now
seems quite elementary.

Thales established what has

become known as Thales' Theorem,
whereby if a triangle is drawn within
a circle with the long side as a
diameter of the circle, then the
opposite angle will always be a right
angle (as well as some other related
properties derived from this). He is
also credited with another theorem,
also known as Thales' Theorem or
the Intercept Theorem, about the
ratios of the line segments that are
created if two intersecting lines are
intercepted by a pair of parallels Thales' Intercept Theorem
(and, by extension, the ratios of the
sides of similar triangles).

To some extent, however, the legend of the 6th Century BCE mathematician Pythagoras of Samos has
become synonymous with the birth of Greek mathematics. Indeed, he is believed to have coined both the
words "philosophy" ("love of wisdom") and "mathematics" ("that which is learned"). Pythagoras was
perhaps the first to realize that a complete system of mathematics could be constructed, where geometric
elements corresponded with numbers. Pythagoras’ Theorem (or the Pythagorean Theorem) is one of the
best known of all mathematical theorems. But he remains a controversial figure, as we will see, and
Greek mathematics was by no
means limited to one man.

Three geometrical problems in

particular, often referred to as the
Three Classical Problems, and all to
be solved by purely geometric
means using only a straight edge
and a compass, date back to the
early days of Greek geometry: “the
squaring (or quadrature) of the
circle”, “the doubling (or duplicating)
of the cube” and “the trisection of an
angle”. These intransigent problems
were profoundly influential on future
geometry and led to many fruitful
discoveries, although their actual
solutions (or, as it turned out, the
proofs of their impossibility) had to
wait until the 19th Century.

Hippocrates of Chios (not to be The Three Classical Problems

confused with the great Greek
physician Hippocrates of Kos) was
one such Greek mathematician who applied himself to these problems during the 5th Century BCE (his
contribution to the “squaring the circle” problem is known as the Lune of Hippocrates). His influential book
“The Elements”, dating to around 440 BCE, was the first compilation of the elements of geometry, and his
work was an important source for Euclid's later work.
It was the Greeks who first grappled
with the idea of infinity, such as
described in the well-known
paradoxes attributed to the
philosopher Zeno of Elea in the 5th
Century BCE. The most famous of
his paradoxes is that of Achilles and
the Tortoise, which describes a
theoretical race between Achilles
and a tortoise. Achilles gives the
much slower tortoise a head start,
but by the time Achilles reaches the
tortoise's starting point, the tortoise
has already moved ahead. By the
time Achilles reaches that point, the
tortoise has moved on again, etc,
etc, so that in principle the swift
Achilles can never catch up with the
slow tortoise.

Paradoxes such as this one and

Zeno's so-called Dichotomy
Paradox are based on the infinite
divisibility of space and time, and Zeno's Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise
rest on the idea that a half plus a
quarter plus an eighth plus a
sixteenth, etc, etc, to infinity will never quite equal a whole. The paradox stems, however, from the false
assumption that it is impossible to complete an infinite number of discrete dashes in a finite time, although
it is extremely difficult to definitively prove the fallacy. The ancient Greek Aristotle was the first of many to
try to disprove the paradoxes, particularly as he was a firm believer that infinity could only ever be
potential and not real.

Democritus, most famous for his prescient ideas about all matter being composed of tiny atoms, was also
a pioneer of mathematics and geometry in the 5th - 4th Century BCE, and he produced works with titles
like "On Numbers", "On Geometrics", "On Tangencies", "On Mapping" and "On Irrationals", although
these works have not survived. We do know that he was among the first to observe that a cone (or
pyramid) has one-third the volume of a cylinder (or prism) with the same base and height, and he is
perhaps the first to have seriously considered the division of objects into an infinite number of cross-
sections.

However, it is certainly true that Pythagoras in particular greatly influenced those who came after him,
including Plato, who established his famous Academy in Athens in 387 BCE, and his protégé Aristotle,
whose work on logic was regarded as definitive for over two thousand years. Plato the mathematician is
best known for his description of the five Platonic solids, but the value of his work as a teacher and
popularizer of mathematics can not be overstated.

Plato’s student Eudoxus of Cnidus is usually credited with the first implementation of the “method of
exhaustion” (later developed by Archimedes), an early method of integration by successive
approximations which he used for the calculation of the volume of the pyramid and cone. He also
developed a general theory of proportion, which was applicable to incommensurable (irrational)
magnitudes that cannot be expressed as a ratio of two whole numbers, as well as to commensurable
(rational) magnitudes, thus extending Pythagoras’ incomplete ideas.

Perhaps the most important single contribution of the Greeks, though - and Pythagoras, Plato and
Aristotle were all influential in this respect - was the idea of proof, and the deductive method of using
logical steps to prove or disprove theorems from initial assumed axioms. Older cultures, like the
Egyptians and the Babylonians, had relied on inductive reasoning, that is using repeated observations to
establish rules of thumb. It is this concept of proof that give mathematics its power and ensures that
proven theories are as true today as they were two thousand years ago, and which laid the foundations
for the systematic approach to mathematics of Euclid and those who came after him.
GREEK MATHEMATICS - PYTHAGORAS
It is sometimes claimed that we owe pure mathematics to Pythagoras,
and he is often called the first "true" mathematician. But, although his
contribution was clearly important, he nevertheless remains a
controversial figure. He left no mathematical writings himself, and
much of what we know about Pythagorean thought comes to us from
the writings of Philolaus and other later Pythagorean scholars. Indeed,
it is by no means clear whether many (or indeed any) of the theorems
ascribed to him were in fact solved by Pythagoras personally or by his
followers.

The school he established at Croton in southern Italy around 530 BCE

was the nucleus of a rather bizarre Pythagorean sect. Although
Pythagorean thought was largely dominated by mathematics, it was
also profoundly mystical, and Pythagoras imposed his quasi-religious
philosophies, strict vegetarianism, communal living, secret rites and
odd rules on all the members of his school (including bizarre and
apparently random edicts about never urinating towards the sun,
never marrying a woman who wears gold jewellery, never passing an
ass lying in the street, never eating or even touching black fava beans,
etc) .
Pythagoras of Samos (c.570-495
BCE)
The members were divided into the "mathematikoi" (or "learners"),
who extended and developed the more mathematical and scientific
work that Pythagoras himself began, and the "akousmatikoi" (or "listeners"), who focused on the more
religious and ritualistic aspects of his teachings. There was always a certain amount of friction between
the two groups and eventually the sect became caught up in some fierce local fighting and ultimately
dispersed. Resentment built up against the secrecy and exclusiveness of the Pythagoreans and, in 460
BCE, all their meeting places were burned and destroyed, with at least 50 members killed in Croton
alone.

The over-riding dictum of Pythagoras's school was “All is number” or “God is number”, and the
Pythagoreans effectively practised a kind of numerology or number-worship, and considered each
number to have its own character and meaning. For example, the number one was the generator of all
numbers; two represented opinion; three, harmony; four, justice; five, marriage; six, creation; seven, the
seven planets or “wandering stars”; etc. Odd numbers were thought of as female and even numbers as
male.
The holiest number of all was
"tetractys" or ten, a triangular
number composed of the sum of
one, two, three and four. It is a great
tribute to the Pythagoreans'
intellectual achievements that they
deduced the special place of the
number 10 from an abstract
mathematical argument rather than
from something as mundane as
counting the fingers on two hands.

However, Pythagoras and his

school - as well as a handful of
other mathematicians of ancient
Greece - was largely responsible for
introducing a more rigorous
mathematics than what had gone
before, building from first principles
using axioms and logic. Before
Pythagoras, for example, geometry
had been merely a collection of
rules derived by empirical The Pythagorean Tetractys
measurement. Pythagoras
discovered that a complete system
of mathematics could be constructed, where geometric elements corresponded with numbers, and where
integers and their ratios were all that was necessary to establish an entire system of logic and truth.

He is mainly remembered for what has become known as Pythagoras’ Theorem (or the Pythagorean
Theorem): that, for any right-angled triangle, the square of the length of the hypotenuse (the longest side,
opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the square of the other two sides (or “legs”). Written as an
equation: a2 + b2 = c2. What Pythagoras and his followers did not realize is that this also works for any
shape: thus, the area of a pentagon on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the pentagons on the other
two sides, as it does for a semi-circle or any other regular (or even irregular( shape.
The simplest and most commonly
quoted example of a Pythagorean
triangle is one with sides of 3, 4 and
5 units (32 + 42 = 52, as can be seen
by drawing a grid of unit squares on
each side as in the diagram at right),
but there are a potentially infinite
number of other integer
“Pythagorean triples”, starting with
(5, 12 13), (6, 8, 10), (7, 24, 25), (8,
15, 17), (9, 40, 41), etc. It should be
noted, however that (6, 8, 10) is not
what is known as a “primitive”
Pythagorean triple, because it is just
a multiple of (3, 4, 5).

Pythagoras’ Theorem and the

properties of right-angled triangles
seems to be the most ancient and
widespread mathematical
development after basic arithmetic
and geometry, and it was touched
on in some of the most ancient
mathematical texts from Babylon
and Egypt, dating from over a
thousand years earlier. One of the Pythagoras' (Pythagorean) Theorem
simplest proofs comes from ancient
China, and probably dates from well
before Pythagoras' birth. It was Pythagoras, though, who gave the theorem its definitive form, although it
is not clear whether Pythagoras himself definitively proved it or merely described it. Either way, it has
become one of the best-known of all mathematical theorems, and as many as 400 different proofs now
exist, some geometrical, some algebraic, some involving advanced differential equations, etc.

It soom became apparent, though, that non-integer solutions were also possible, so that an isosceles
triangle with sides 1, 1 and √2, for example, also has a right angle, as the Babylonians had discovered
centuries earlier. However, when Pythagoras’s student Hippasus tried to calculate the value of √2, he
found that it was not possible to express it as a fraction, thereby indicating the potential existence of a
whole new world of numbers, the irrational numbers (numbers that can not be expressed as simple
fractions of integers). This discovery rather shattered the elegant mathematical world built up by
Pythagoras and his followers, and the existence of a number that could not be expressed as the ratio of
two of God's creations (which is how they thought of the integers) jeopardized the cult's entire belief
system.

Poor Hippasus was apparently drowned by the secretive Pythagoreans for broadcasting this important
discovery to the outside world. But the replacement of the idea of the divinity of the integers by the richer
concept of the continuum, was an essential development in mathematics. It marked the real birth of
Greek geometry, which deals with lines and planes and angles, all of which are continuous and not
discrete.

Among his other achievements in geometry, Pythagoras (or at least his followers, the Pythagoreans) also
realized that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles (180°), and probably also the
generalization which states that the sum of the interior angles of a polygon with n sides is equal to (2n - 4)
right angles, and that the sum of its exterior angles equals 4 right angles. They were able to construct
figures of a given area, and to use simple geometrical algebra, for example to solve equations such as
a(a - x) = x2 by geometrical means.
The Pythagoreans also established the foundations of number theory, with their investigations of
triangular, square and also perfect numbers (numbers that are the sum of their divisors). They discovered
several new properties of square numbers, such as that the square of a number n is equal to the sum of
the first n odd numbers (e.g. 42 = 16 = 1 + 3 + 5 + 7). They also discovered at least the first pair of
amicable numbers, 220 and 284 (amicable numbers are pairs of numbers for which the sum of the
divisors of one number equals the other number, e.g. the proper divisors of 220 are 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, 20,
22, 44, 55 and 110, of which the sum is 284; and the proper divisors of 284 are 1, 2, 4, 71, and 142, of
which the sum is 220).

Pythagoras is also credited with the

discovery that the intervals between
harmonious musical notes always
have whole number ratios. For
instance, playing half a length of a
guitar string gives the same note as
the open string, but an octave
higher; a third of a length gives a
different but harmonious note; etc.
Non-whole number ratios, on the
other hand, tend to give dissonant
sounds. In this way, Pythagoras
described the first four overtones
which create the common intervals
which have become the primary
building blocks of musical harmony:
the octave (1:1), the perfect fifth
(3:2), the perfect fourth (4:3) and the
major third (5:4). The oldest way of
tuning the 12-note chromatic scale
is known as Pythagorean tuning,
and it is based on a stack of perfect Pythagoras is credited with the discovery of the ratios between
fifths, each tuned in the ratio 3:2. harmonious musical tones

The mystical Pythagoras was so

excited by this discovery that he became convinced that the whole universe was based on numbers, and
that the planets and stars moved according to mathematical equations, which corresponded to musical
notes, and thus produced a kind of symphony, the “Musical Universalis” or “Music of the Spheres”.
GREEK MATHEMATICS - PLATO
Although usually remembered today as a philosopher, Plato was also
one of ancient Greece’s most important patrons of mathematics.
Inspired by Pythagoras, he founded his Academy in Athens in 387
BCE, where he stressed mathematics as a way of understanding
more about reality. In particular, he was convinced that geometry was
the key to unlocking the secrets of the universe. The sign above the
Academy entrance read: “Let no-one ignorant of geometry enter here”.

Plato played an important role in encouraging and inspiring Greek

intellectuals to study mathematics as well as philosophy. His Academy
taught mathematics as a branch of philosophy, as Pythagoras had
done, and the first 10 years of the 15 year course at the Academy
involved the study of science and mathematics, including plane and
solid geometry, astronomy and harmonics. Plato became known as
the "maker of mathematicians", and his Academy boasted some of the
most prominent mathematicians of the ancient world, including
Eudoxus, Theaetetus and Archytas.

He demanded of his students accurate definitions, clearly stated

assumptions, and logical deductive proof, and he insisted that Plato (c.428-348 BCE)
geometric proofs be demonstrated with no aids other than a straight
edge and a compass. Among the many mathematical problems Plato
posed for his students’ investigation were the so-called Three Classical Problems (“squaring the circle”,
“doubling the cube” and “trisecting the angle”) and to some extent these problems have become identified
with Plato, although he was not the
first to pose them.

Plato the mathematician is perhaps

best known for his identification of 5
regular symmetrical 3-dimensional
shapes, which he maintained were
the basis for the whole universe,
and which have become known as
the Platonic Solids: the tetrahedron
(constructed of 4 regular triangles,
and which for Plato represented
fire), the octahedron (composed of 8
triangles, representing air), the
icosahedron (composed of 20
triangles, and representing water),
the cube (composed of 6 squares,
and representing earth), and the
dodecahedron (made up of 12
pentagons, which Plato obscurely
described as “the god used for
arranging the constellations on the
whole heaven”).
Platonic Solids
The tetrahedron, cube and
dodecahedron were probably
familiar to Pythagoras, and the octahedron and icosahedron were probably discovered by Theaetetus, a
contemporary of Plato. Furthermore, it fell to Euclid, half a century later, to prove that these were the only
possible convex regular polyhedra. But they nevertheless became popularly known as the Platonic
Solids, and inspired mathematicians and geometers for many centuries to come. For example, around
1600, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler devised an ingenious system of nested Platonic solids
and spheres to approximate quite well the distances of the known planets from the Sun (although he was
enough of a scientist to abandon his elegant model when it proved to be not accurate enough).
HELLENISTIC
MATHEMATICS
By the 3rd Century BCE, in the
wake of the conquests of Alexander
the Great, mathematical
breakthroughs were also beginning
to be made on the edges of the
Greek Hellenistic empire.

In particular, Alexandria in Egypt

became a great centre of learning
under the beneficent rule of the
Ptolemies, and its famous Library
soon gained a reputation to rival that
of the Athenian Academy. The
patrons of the Library were arguably
the first professional scientists, paid
for their devotion to research.
Among the best known and most
influential mathematicians who
studied and taught at Alexandria
were Euclid, Archimedes,
Eratosthenes, Heron, Menelaus and
Diophantus.

During the late 4th and early 3rd

Century BCE, Euclid was the great
chronicler of the mathematics of the
time, and one of the most influential
teachers in history. He virtually
invented classical (Euclidean) The Sieve of Eratosthenes
geometry as we know it.
Archimedes spent most of his life in
Syracuse, Sicily, but also studied for a while in Alexandria. He is perhaps best known as an engineer and
inventor but, in the light of recent discoveries, he is now considered of one of the greatest pure
mathematicians of all time. Eratosthenes of Alexandria was a near contemporary of Archimedes in the
3rd Century BCE. A mathematician, astronomer and geographer, he devised the first system of latitude
and longitude, and calculated the circumference of the earth to a remarkable degree of accuracy. As a
mathematician, his greatest legacy is the “Sieve of Eratosthenes” algorithm for identifying prime numbers.
It is not known exactly when the
great Library of Alexandria burned
down, but Alexandria remained an
important intellectual centre for
some centuries. In the 1st century
BCE, Heron (or Hero) was another
great Alexandrian inventor, best
known in mathematical circles for
Heronian triangles (triangles with
integer sides and integer area),
Heron’s Formula for finding the area
of a triangle from its side lengths,
and Heron’s Method for iteratively
computing a square root. He was
also the first mathematician to
confront at least the idea of √-1
(although he had no idea how to
treat it, something which had to wait
for Tartaglia and Cardano in the
16th Century).

Menelaus of Alexandria, who lived

in the 1st - 2nd Century CE, was the
first to recognize geodesics on a
curved surface as the natural
analogues of straight lines on a flat Menelaus of Alexandria introduced the concept of spherical triangle
plane. His book “Sphaerica” dealt
with the geometry of the sphere and its application in astronomical measurements and calculations, and
introduced the concept of spherical triangle (a figure formed of three great circle arcs, which he named
"trilaterals").

In the 3rd Century CE, Diophantus of Alexandria was the first to recognize fractions as numbers, and is
considered an early innovator in the field of what would later become known as algebra. He applied
himself to some quite complex algebraic problems, including what is now known as Diophantine Analysis,
which deals with finding integer solutions to kinds of problems that lead to equations in several unknowns
(Diophantine equations). Diophantus’ “Arithmetica”, a collection of problems giving numerical solutions of
both determinate and indeterminate equations, was the most prominent work on algebra in all Greek
mathematics, and his problems exercised the minds of many of the world's best mathematicians for much
of the next two millennia.
But Alexandria was not the only
centre of learning in the Hellenistic
Greek empire. Mention should also
be made of Apollonius of Perga (a
city in modern-day southern Turkey)
whose late 3rd Century BCE work
on geometry (and, in particular, on
conics and conic sections) was very
influential on later European
mathematicians. It was Apollonius
who gave the ellipse, the parabola,
and the hyperbola the names by
which we know them, and showed
how they could be derived from
different sections through a cone.

Hipparchus, who was also from

Hellenistic Anatolia and who live in
the 2nd Century BCE, was perhaps Conic sections of Apollonius
the greatest of all ancient
astronomers. He revived the use of
arithmetic techniques first developed by the Chaldeans and Babylonians, and is usually credited with the
beginnings of trigonometry. He calculated (with remarkable accuracy for the time) the distance of the
moon from the earth by measuring the different parts of the moon visible at different locations and
calculating the distance using the properties of triangles. He went on to create the first table of chords
(side lengths corresponding to different angles of a triangle). By the time of the great Alexandrian
astronomer Ptolemy in the 2nd Century CE, however, Greek mastery of numerical procedures had
progressed to the point where Ptolemy was able to include in his “Almagest” a table of trigonometric
chords in a circle for steps of ¼° which (although expressed sexagesimally in the Babylonian style) is
accurate to about five decimal places.

By the middle of the 1st Century BCE and thereafter, however, the Romans had tightened their grip on
the old Greek empire. The Romans had no use for pure mathematics, only for its practical applications,
and the Christian regime that followed it even less so. The final blow to the Hellenistic mathematical
heritage at Alexandria might be seen in the figure of Hypatia, the first recorded female mathematician,
and a renowned teacher who had written some respected commentaries on Diophantus and Apollonius.
She was dragged to her death by a Christian mob in 415 CE.
ROMAN MATHEMATICS
By the middle of the 1st Century
BCE, the Roman had tightened their
grip on the old Greek and Hellenistic
empires, and the mathematical
revolution of the Greeks ground to
halt. Despite all their advances in
other respects, no mathematical
innovations occurred under the
Roman Empire and Republic, and
there were no mathematicians of Roman numerals
note. The Romans had no use for
pure mathematics, only for its
practical applications, and the Christian regime that followed it (after Christianity became the official
religion of the Roman empire) even
less so.

Roman numerals are well known

today, and were the dominant
number system for trade and
administration in most of Europe for
the best part of a millennium. It was
decimal (base 10) system but not
directly positional, and did not
include a zero, so that, for arithmetic
and mathematical purposes, it was
a clumsy and inefficient system. It
was based on letters of the Roman
alphabet - I, V, X, L, C, D and M -
combines to signify the sum of their
values (e.g. VII = V + I + I = 7).
Roman arithmetic
Later, a subtractive notation was
also adopted, where VIIII, for
example, was replaced by IX (10 - 1 = 9), which simplified the writing of numbers a little, but made
calculation even more difficult, requiring conversion of the subtractive notation at the beginning of a sum
and then its re-application at the end (see image at right). Due to the difficulty of written arithmetic using
Roman numeral notation, calculations were usually performed with an abacus, based on earlier
Babylonian and Greek abaci.
MAYAN MATHEMATICS
The Mayan civilisation had settled in
the region of Central America from
about 2000 BCE, although the so-
called Classic Period stretches from
about 250 CE to 900 CE. At its
peak, it was one of the most densely
populated and culturally dynamic
societies in the world.

The importance of astronomy and

calendar calculations in Mayan
society required mathematics, and
the Maya constructed quite early a
very sophisticated number system,
possibly more advanced than any
other in the world at the time
(although the dating of
developments is quite difficult).
Mayan numerals
The Mayan and other
Mesoamerican cultures used a
vigesimal number system based on base 20 (and, to some extent, base 5), probably originally developed
from counting on fingers and toes. The numerals consisted of only three symbols: zero, represented as a
shell shape; one, a dot; and five, a bar. Thus, addition and subtraction was a relatively simple matter of
adding up dots and bars. After the number 19, larger numbers were written in a kind of vertical place
value format using powers of 20: 1, 20, 400, 8000, 160000, etc (see image above), although in their
calendar calculations they gave the third position a value of 360 instead of 400 (higher positions revert to
multiples of 20).

The pre-classic Maya and their neighbours had independently developed the concept of zero by at least
as early as 36 BCE, and we have evidence of their working with sums up to the hundreds of millions, and
with dates so large it took several lines just to represent them. Despite not possessing the concept of a
fraction, they produced extremely accurate astronomical observations using no instruments other than
sticks, and were able to measure the length of the solar year to a far higher degree of accuracy than that
used in Europe (their calculations produced 365.242 days, compared to the modern value of
365.242198), as well as the length of the lunar month (their estimate was 29.5308 days, compared to the
modern value of 29.53059).

However, due to the geographical disconnect, Mayan and Mesoamerican mathematics had absolutely no
influence on Old World (European and Asian) numbering systems and mathematics.
CHINESE
MATHEMATICS
Even as mathematical
developments in the ancient Greek
world were beginning to falter during
the final centuries BCE, the
burgeoning trade empire of China
was leading Chinese mathematics
to ever greater heights.

The simple but efficient ancient

Chinese numbering system, which
dates back to at least the 2nd
millennium BCE, used small
bamboo rods arranged to represent Ancient Chinese number system
the numbers 1 to 9, which were then
places in columns representing
units, tens, hundreds, thousands, etc. It was therefore a decimal place value system, very similar to the
one we use today - indeed it was the first such number system, adopted by the Chinese over a thousand
years before it was adopted in the West - and it made even quite complex calculations very quick and
easy.

Written numbers, however, employed the slightly less efficient system of using a different symbol for tens,
hundreds, thousands, etc. This was largely because there was no concept or symbol of zero, and it had
the effect of limiting the usefulness of the written number in Chinese.

The use of the abacus is often thought of as a Chinese idea, although some type of abacus was in use in
Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece, probably much earlier than in China (the first Chinese abacus, or
“suanpan”, we know of dates to
about the 2nd Century BCE).

There was a pervasive fascination

with numbers and mathematical
patterns in ancient China, and
different numbers were believed to
have cosmic significance. In
particular, magic squares - squares
of numbers where each row, column
and diagonal added up to the same
total - were regarded as having
great spiritual and religious
significance.

The Lo Shu Square, an order three

square where each row, column and
diagonal adds up to 15, is perhaps Lo Shu magic square, with its traditional graphical representation
the earliest of these, dating back to
around 650 BCE (the legend of
Emperor Yu’s discovery of the the square on the back of a turtle is set as taking place in about 2800
BCE). But soon, bigger magic squares were being constructed, with even greater magical and
mathematical powers, culminating in the elaborate magic squares, circles and triangles of Yang Hui in the
13th Century (Yang Hui also produced a trianglular representation of binomial coefficients identical to the
later Pascals’ Triangle, and was perhaps the first to use decimal fractions in the modern form).
But the main thrust of Chinese
mathematics developed in response
to the empire’s growing need for
mathematically competent
administrators. A textbook called
“Jiuzhang Suanshu” or “Nine
Chapters on the Mathematical Art”
(written over a period of time from
about 200 BCE onwards, probably
by a variety of authors) became an
important tool in the education of
such a civil service, covering
hundreds of problems in practical
areas such as trade, taxation,
engineering and the payment of
wages.

It was particularly important as a

guide to how to solve equations -
the deduction of an unknown
number from other known
information - using a sophisticated
matrix-based method which did not
appear in the West until Carl
Friedrich Gauss re-discovered it at
the beginning of the 19th Century
(and which is now known as
Gaussian elimination).

Among the greatest mathematicians

of ancient China was Liu Hui, who
produced a detailed commentary on
the “Nine Chapters” in 263 CE, was
one of the first mathematicians
Early Chinese method of solving equations
known to leave roots unevaluated,
giving more exact results instead of
approximations. By an approximation using a regular polygon with 192 sides, he also formulated an
algorithm which calculated the value of π as 3.14159 (correct to five decimal places), as well as
developing a very early forms of both integral and differential calculus.
The Chinese went on to solve far
more complex equations using far
larger numbers than those outlined
in the “Nine Chapters”, though. They
also started to pursue more abstract
mathematical problems (although
usually couched in rather artificial
practical terms), including what has
become known as the Chinese
Remainder Theorem. This uses the
remainders after dividing an
unknown number by a succession of
smaller numbers, such as 3, 5 and
7, in order to calculate the smallest
value of the unknown number. A
technique for solving such
problems, initially posed by Sun Tzu
in the 3rd Century CE and
considered one of the jewels of
mathematics, was being used to
measure planetary movements by
Chinese astronomers in the 6th
Century AD, and even today it has
practical uses, such as in Internet
cryptography.

By the 13th Century, the Golden

Age of Chinese mathematics, there
were over 30 prestigious
mathematics schools scattered
across China. Perhaps the most
brilliant Chinese mathematician of The Chinese Remainder Theorem
this time was Qin Jiushao, a rather
violent and corrupt imperial
administrator and warrior, who explored solutions to quadratic and even cubic equations using a method
of repeated approximations very similar to that later devised in the West by Sir Isaac Newton in the 17th
Century. Qin even extended his technique to solve (albeit approximately) equations involving numbers up
to the power of ten, extraordinarily complex mathematics for its time.
INDIAN MATHEMATICS
Despite developing quite
independently of Chinese (and
probably also of Babylonian
mathematics), some very advanced
mathematical discoveries were
made at a very early time in India.

Mantras from the early Vedic period

(before 1000 BCE) invoke powers of
ten from a hundred all the way up to
a trillion, and provide evidence of
the use of arithmetic operations
such as addition, subtraction,
multiplication, fractions, squares,
cubes and roots. A 4th Century CE The evolution of Hindu-Arabic numerals
Sanskrit text reports Buddha
enumerating numbers up to 1053, as
well as describing six more numbering systems over and above these, leading to a number equivalent to
10421. Given that there are an estimated 1080 atoms in the whole universe, this is as close to infinity as
any in the ancient world came. It also describes a series of iterations in decreasing size, in order to
demonstrate the size of an atom, which comes remarkably close to the actual size of a carbon atom
(about 70 trillionths of a metre).

As early as the 8th Century BCE, long before Pythagoras, a text known as the “Sulba Sutras” (or "Sulva
Sutras") listed several simple Pythagorean triples, as well as a statement of the simplified Pythagorean
theorem for the sides of a square and for a rectangle (indeed, it seems quite likely that Pythagoras
learned his basic geometry from the "Sulba Sutras"). The Sutras also contain geometric solutions of linear
and quadratic equations in a single unknown, and give a remarkably accurate figure for the square root of
2, obtained by adding 1 + 1⁄3 + 1⁄(3 x 4) - 1⁄(3 x 4 x 34), which yields a value of 1.4142156, correct to 5 decimal
places.

As early as the 3rd or 2nd Century BCE, Jain mathematicians recognized five different types of infinities:
infinite in one direction, in two directions, in area, infinite everywhere and perpetually infinite. Ancient
Buddhist literature also demonstrates a prescient awareness of indeterminate and infinite numbers, with
numbers deemed to be of three types: countable, uncountable and infinite.

Like the Chinese, the Indians early discovered the benefits of a decimal place value number system, and
were certainly using it before about the 3rd Century CE. They refined and perfected the system,
particularly the written representation of the numerals, creating the ancestors of the nine numerals that
(thanks to its dissemination by medieval Arabic mathematicans) we use across the world today,
sometimes considered one of the greatest intellectual innovations of all time.
The Indians were also responsible
for another hugely important
development in mathematics. The
earliest recorded usage of a circle
character for the number zero is
usually attributed to a 9th Century
engraving in a temple in Gwalior in
central India. But the brilliant
conceptual leap to include zero as a
number in its own right (rather than
merely as a placeholder, a blank or
empty space within a number, as it
had been treated until that time) is
usually credited to the 7th Century The earliest use of a circle character for the number zero was in India
Indian mathematicians
Brahmagupta - or possibly another
Indian, Bhaskara I - even though it may well have been in practical use for centuries before that. The use
of zero as a number which could be used in calculations and mathematical investigations, would
revolutionize mathematics.

Brahmagupta established the basic mathematical rules for dealing with zero: 1 + 0 = 1; 1 - 0 = 1; and 1 x
0 = 0 (the breakthrough which would make sense of the apparently non-sensical operation 1 ÷ 0 would
also fall to an Indian, the 12th Century mathematician Bhaskara II). Brahmagupta also established rules
for dealing with negative numbers, and pointed out that quadratic equations could in theory have two
possible solutions, one of which could be negative. He even attempted to write down these rather
abstract concepts, using the initials of the names of colours to represent unknowns in his equations, one
of the earliest intimations of what we now know as algebra.

The so-called Golden Age of Indian mathematics can be said to extend from the 5th to 12th Centuries,
and many of its mathematical discoveries predated similar discoveries in the West by several centuries,
which has led to some claims of plagiarism by later European mathematicians, at least some of whom
were probably aware of the earlier Indian work. Certainly, it seems that Indian contributions to
mathematics have not been given
due acknowledgement until very
recently in modern history.

Golden Age Indian mathematicians

made fundamental advances in the
theory of trigonometry, a method of
linking geometry and numbers first
developed by the Greeks. They
used ideas like the sine, cosine and
tangent functions (which relate the
angles of a triangle to the relative
lengths of its sides) to survey the
land around them, navigate the seas
and even chart the heavens. For
instance, Indian astronomers used
trigonometry to calculated the
relative distances between the Earth
and the Moon and the Earth and the
Sun. They realized that, when the
Moon is half full and directly Indian astronomers used trigonometry tables to estimate the relative
opposite the Sun, then the Sun, distance of the Earth to the Sun and Moon
Moon and Earth form a right angled
triangle, and were able to accurately measure the angle as 1⁄7°. Their sine tables gave a ratio for the sides
of such a triangle as 400:1, indicating that the Sun is 400 times further away from the Earth than the
Moon.

Although the Greeks had been able to calculate the sine function of some angles, the Indian astronomers
wanted to be able to calculate the sine function of any given angle. A text called the “Surya Siddhanta”,
by unknown authors and dating from around 400 CE, contains the roots of modern trigonometry, including
the first real use of sines, cosines, inverse sines, tangents and secants.

As early as the 6th Century CE, the great Indian mathematician and astronomer Aryabhata produced
categorical definitions of sine, cosine, versine and inverse sine, and specified complete sine and versine
tables, in 3.75° intervals from 0° to 90°, to an accuracy of 4 decimal places. Aryabhata also demonstrated
solutions to simultaneous quadratic equations, and produced an approximation for the value of π
equivalent to 3.1416, correct to four decimal places. He used this to estimate the circumference of the
Earth, arriving at a figure of 24,835 miles, only 70 miles off its true value. But, perhaps even more
astonishing, he seems to have been aware that π is an irrational number, and that any calculation can
only ever be an approximation,
something not proved in Europe
until 1761.

Bhaskara II, who lived in the 12th

Century, was one of the most
accomplished of all India’s great
mathematicians. He is credited with
explaining the previously
misunderstood operation of division
by zero. He noticed that dividing one
into two pieces yields a half, so 1 ÷
1⁄ = 2. Similarly, 1 ÷ 1⁄ = 3. So,
2 3
dividing 1 by smaller and smaller
factions yields a larger and larger
number of pieces. Ultimately,
therefore, dividing one into pieces of
zero size would yield infinitely many
pieces, indicating that 1 ÷ 0 = ∞ (the
symbol for infinity).

However, Bhaskara II also made

important contributions to many
different areas of mathematics from
solutions of quadratic, cubic and
quartic equations (including
negative and irrational solutions) to
solutions of Diophantine equations Illustration of infinity as the reciprocal of zero
of the second order to preliminary
concepts of infinitesimal calculus and mathematical analysis to spherical trigonometry and other aspects
of trigonometry. Some of his findings predate similar discoveries in Europe by several centuries, and he
made important contributions in terms of the systemization of (then) current knowledge and improved
methods for known solutions.

The Kerala School of Astronomy and Mathematics was founded in the late 14th Century by Madhava of
Sangamagrama, sometimes called the greatest mathematician-astronomer of medieval India. He
developed infinite series approximations for a range of trigonometric functions, including π, sine, etc.
Some of his contributions to geometry and algebra and his early forms of differentiation and integration
for simple functions may have been transmitted to Europe via Jesuit missionaries, and it is possible that
the later European development of calculus was influenced by his work to some extent.
INDIAN MATHEMATICS - BRAHMAGUPTA
The great 7th Century Indian mathematician and astronomer
Brahmagupta wrote some important works on both mathematics and
astronomy. He was from the state of Rajasthan of northwest India (he
is often referred to as Bhillamalacarya, the teacher from Bhillamala),
and later became the head of the astronomical observatory at Ujjain in
central India. Most of his works are composed in elliptic verse, a
common practice in Indian mathematics at the time, and consequently
have something of a poetic ring to them.

It seems likely that Brahmagupta's works, especially his most famous

text, the “Brahmasphutasiddhanta”, were brought by the 8th Century
Abbasid caliph Al-Mansur to his newly founded centre of learning at
Baghdad on the banks of the Tigris, providing an important link
between Indian mathematics and astronomy and the nascent upsurge
in science and mathematics in the Islamic world.

In his work on arithmetic, Brahmagupta explained how to find the cube

and cube-root of an integer and gave rules facilitating the computation
of squares and square roots. He also gave rules for dealing with five
types of combinations of fractions. He gave the sum of the squares of Brahmagupta (598–668 CE)
the first n natural numbers as n(n + 1)(2n + 1)⁄ 6 and the sum of the cubes of
the first n natural numbers as (n(n +
1)⁄ )².
2

Brahmagupta’s genius, though,

came in his treatment of the concept
of (then relatively new) the number
zero. Although often also attributed
to the 7th Century Indian
mathematician Bhaskara I, his
“Brahmasphutasiddhanta” is
probably the earliest known text to
treat zero as a number in its own
right, rather than as simply a
placeholder digit as was done by the
Babylonians, or as a symbol for a
lack of quantity as was done by the
Greeks and Romans.

Brahmagupta established the basic

mathematical rules for dealing with
zero (1 + 0 = 1; 1 - 0 = 1; and 1 x 0
= 0), although his understanding of
division by zero was incomplete (he
thought that 1 ÷ 0 = 0). Almost 500
years later, in the 12th Century,
another Indian mathematician,
Bhaskara II, showed that the answer
Brahmagupta’s rules for dealing with zero and negative numbers
should be infinity, not zero (on the
grounds that 1 can be divided into
an infinite number of pieces of size zero), an answer that was considered correct for centuries. However,
this logic does not explain why 2 ÷ 0, 7 ÷ 0, etc, should also be zero - the modern view is that a number
divided by zero is actually "undefined" (i.e. it doesn't make sense).

Brahmagupta’s view of numbers as abstract entities, rather than just for counting and measuring, allowed
him to make yet another huge conceptual leap which would have profound consequence for future
mathematics. Previously, the sum 3 - 4, for example, was considered to be either meaningless or, at best,
just zero. Brahmagupta, however, realized that there could be such a thing as a negative number, which
he referred to as “debt” as a opposed to “property”. He expounded on the rules for dealing with negative
numbers (e.g. a negative times a negative is a positive, a negative times a positive is a negative, etc).

Furthermore, he pointed out, quadratic equations (of the type x2 + 2 = 11, for example) could in theory
have two possible solutions, one of which could be negative, because 32 = 9 and -32 = 9. In addition to his
work on solutions to general linear equations and quadratic equations, Brahmagupta went yet further by
considering systems of simultaneous equations (set of equations containing multiple variables), and
solving quadratic equations with two unknowns, something which was not even considered in the West
until a thousand years later, when
Fermat was considering similar
problems in 1657.

Brahmagupta even attempted to

write down these rather abstract
concepts, using the initials of the
names of colours to represent
unknowns in his equations, one of
the earliest intimations of what we
now know as algebra.

Brahmagupta dedicated a
substantial portion of his work to
geometry and trigonometry. He
established √10 (3.162277) as a
good practical approximation for π
(3.141593), and gave a formula,
now known as Brahmagupta's
Formula, for the area of a cyclic
quadrilateral, as well as a
celebrated theorem on the Brahmagupta’s Theorem on cyclic quadrilaterals
diagonals of a cyclic quadrilateral,
usually referred to as
Brahmagupta's Theorem.
INDIAN MATHEMATICS - MADHAVA
Madhava sometimes called the greatest mathematician-astronomer of
medieval India. He came from the town of Sangamagrama in Kerala,
near the southern tip of India, and founded the Kerala School of
Astronomy and Mathematics in the late 14th Century.

Although almost all of Madhava's original work is lost, he is referred to

in the work of later Kerala mathematicians as the source for several
infinite series expansions (including the sine, cosine, tangent and
arctangent functions and the value of π), representing the first steps
from the traditional finite processes of algebra to considerations of the
infinite, with its implications for the future development of calculus and
mathematical analysis.

Unlike most previous cultures, which had been rather nervous about
the concept of infinity, Madhava was more than happy to play around Madhava of Sangamagrama (c.1350-
with infinity, particularly infinite series. He showed how, although one 1425)
can be approximated by adding a half plus a quarter plus an eighth
plus a sixteenth, etc, (as even the ancient Egyptians and Greeks had
known), the exact total of one can
only be achieved by adding up
infinitely many fractions.

But Madhava went further and

linked the idea of an infinite series
with geometry and trigonometry. He
realized that, by successively
adding and subtracting different odd
number fractions to infinity, he could
home in on an exact formula for π
(this was two centuries before
Leibniz was to come to the same
conclusion in Europe). Through his
application of this series, Madhava
obtained a value for π correct to an
astonishing 13 decimal places.

He went on to use the same

mathematics to obtain infinite series
expressions for the sine formula,
which could then be used to
calculate the sine of any angle to
any degree of accuracy, as well as
for other trigonometric functions like
cosine, tangent and arctangent.
Perhaps even more remarkable,
though, is that he also gave
estimates of the error term or
correction term, implying that he Madhava’s method for approximating π by an infinite series of fractions
quite understood the limit nature of
the infinite series.
Madhava’s use of infinite series to approximate a range of trigonometric functions, which were further
developed by his successors at the Kerala School, effectively laid the foundations for the later
development of calculus and analysis, and either he or his disciples developed an early form of
integration for simple functions. Some historians have suggested that Madhava's work, through the
writings of the Kerala School, may have been transmitted to Europe via Jesuit missionaries and traders
who were active around the ancient port of Cochin (Kochi) at the time, and may have had an influence on
later European developments in calculus.

Among his other contributions, Madhava discovered the solutions of some transcendental equations by a
process of iteration, and found approximations for some transcendental numbers by continued fractions.
In astronomy, he discovered a procedure to determine the positions of the Moon every 36 minutes, and
methods to estimate the motions of the planets.
ISLAMIC MATHEMATICS
The Islamic Empire established
across Persia, the Middle East,
Central Asia, North Africa, Iberia
and parts of India from the 8th
Century onwards made significant
contributions towards mathematics.
They were able to draw on and fuse
together the mathematical
developments of both Greece and
India.

One consequence of the Islamic

prohibition on depicting the human
form was the extensive use of
complex geometric patterns to
decorate their buildings, raising
mathematics to the form of an art. In
fact, over time, Muslim artists
discovered all the different forms of
symmetry that can be depicted on a Some examples of the complex symmetries used in Islamic temple
2-dimensional surface. decoration

The Qu’ran itself encouraged the

accumulation of knowledge, and a Golden Age of Islamic science and mathematics flourished throughout
the medieval period from the 9th to 15th Centuries. The House of Wisdom was set up in Baghdad around
810, and work started almost immediately on translating the major Greek and Indian mathematical and
astronomy works into Arabic.

The outstanding Persian mathematician Muhammad Al-Khwarizmi was an early Director of the House of
Wisdom in the 9th Century, and one of the greatest of early Muslim mathematicians. Perhaps Al-
Khwarizmi’s most important contribution to mathematics was his strong advocacy of the Hindu numerical
system (1 - 9 and 0), which he recognized as having the power and efficiency needed to revolutionize
Islamic (and, later, Western) mathematics, and which was soon adopted by the entire Islamic world, and
later by Europe as well.

Al-Khwarizmi's other important contribution was algebra, and he introduced the fundamental algebraic
methods of “reduction” and “balancing” and provided an exhaustive account of solving polynomial
equations up to the second degree. In this way, he helped create the powerful abstract mathematical
language still used across the world today, and allowed a much more general way of analyzing problems
other than just the specific problems previously considered by the Indians and Chinese.
The 10th Century Persian
mathematician Muhammad Al-Karaji
worked to extend algebra still
further, freeing it from its
geometrical heritage, and
introduced the theory of algebraic
calculus. Al-Karaji was the first to
use the method of proof by
mathematical induction to prove his
results, by proving that the first
statement in an infinite sequence of
statements is true, and then proving
that, if any one statement in the
sequence is true, then so is the next
one.

Among other things, Al-Karaji used

mathematical induction to prove the
binomial theorem. A binomial is a
simple type of algebraic expression
which has just two terms which are
operated on only by addition,
subtraction, multiplication and
positive whole-number exponents,
such as (x + y)2. The co-efficients
needed when a binomial is
expanded form a symmetrical
Binomial Theorem
triangle, usually referred to as
Pascal’s Triangle after the 17th
Century French mathematician Blaise Pascal, although many other mathematicians had studied it
centuries before him in India, Persia, China and Italy, including Al-Karaji.

Some hundred years after Al-Karaji, Omar Khayyam (perhaps better known as a poet and the writer of
the “Rubaiyat”, but an important mathematician and astronomer in his own right) generalized Indian
methods for extracting square and cube roots to include fourth, fifth and higher roots in the early 12th
Century. He carried out a systematic analysis of cubic problems, revealing there were actually several
different sorts of cubic equations. Although he did in fact succeed in solving cubic equations, and
although he is usually credited with identifying the foundations of algebraic geometry, he was held back
from further advances by his inability to separate the algebra from the geometry, and a purely algebraic
method for the solution of cubic equations had to wait another 500 years and the Italian mathematicians
del Ferro and Tartaglia.
The 13th Century Persian
astronomer, scientist and
mathematician Nasir Al-Din Al-Tusi
was perhaps the first to treat
trigonometry as a separate
mathematical discipline, distinct
from astronomy. Building on earlier
work by Greek mathematicians such
as Menelaus of Alexandria and
Indian work on the sine function, he
gave the first extensive exposition of
spherical trigonometry, including
listing the six distinct cases of a right
triangle in spherical trigonometry.
One of his major mathematical
contributions was the formulation of
the famous law of sines for plane
triangles, a⁄(sin A) = b⁄(sin B) = c⁄(sin C),
although the sine law for spherical
triangles had been discovered
earlier by the 10th Century Persians
Abul Wafa Buzjani and Abu Nasr
Mansur.

Other medieval Muslim

mathematicians worthy of note
include: Al-Tusi was a pioneer in the field of spherical trigonometry

 the 9th Century Arab Thabit ibn

Qurra, who developed a general formula by which amicable numbers could be derived, re-discovered
much later by both Fermat and Descartes(amicable numbers are pairs of numbers for which the sum of
the divisors of one number equals the other number, e.g. the proper divisors of 220 are 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 11,
20, 22, 44, 55 and 110, of which the sum is 284; and the proper divisors of 284 are 1, 2, 4, 71, and 142,
of which the sum is 220);
 the 10th Century Arab mathematician Abul Hasan al-Uqlidisi, who wrote the earliest surviving text
showing the positional use of Arabic numerals, and particularly the use of decimals instead of fractions
(e.g. 7.375 insead of 73⁄8);
 the 10th Century Arab geometer Ibrahim ibn Sinan, who continued Archimedes' investigations of areas
and volumes, as well as on tangents of a circle;
 the 11th Century Persian Ibn al-Haytham (also known as Alhazen), who, in addition to his
groundbreaking work on optics and physics, established the beginnings of the link between algebra and
geometry, and devised what is now known as "Alhazen's problem" (he was the first mathematician to
derive the formula for the sum of the fourth powers, using a method that is readily generalizable); and
 the 13th Century Persian Kamal al-Din al-Farisi, who applied the theory of conic sections to solve
optical problems, as well as pursuing work in number theory such as on amicable numbers, factorization
and combinatorial methods;
 the 13th Century Moroccan Ibn al-Banna al-Marrakushi, whose works included topics such as
computing square roots and the theory of continued fractions, as well as the discovery of the first new pair
of amicable numbers since ancient times (17,296 and 18,416, later re-discovered by Fermat) and the the
first use of algebraic notation since Brahmagupta.

With the stifling influence of the Turkish Ottoman Empire from the 14th or 15th Century onwards, Islamic
mathematics stagnated, and further developments moved to Europe.
ISLAMIC MATHEMATICS - AL-KHWARIZMI
One of the first Directors of the House of Wisdom in Bagdad in the
early 9th Century was an outstanding Persian mathematician called
Muhammad Al-Khwarizmi. He oversaw the translation of the major
Greek and Indian mathematical and astronomy works (including those
of Brahmagupta) into Arabic, and produced original work which had a
lasting influence on the advance of Muslim and (after his works spread
to Europe through Latin translations in the 12th Century) later
European mathematics.

The word “algorithm” is derived from the Latinization of his name, and
the word "algebra" is derived from the Latinization of "al-jabr", part of
the title of his most famous book, in which he introduced the
fundamental algebraic methods and techniques for solving equations.

Perhaps his most important contribution to mathematics was his

strong advocacy of the Hindu numerical system, which Al-Khwarizmi
recognized as having the power and efficiency needed to revolutionize
Islamic and Western mathematics. The Hindu numerals 1 - 9 and 0 -
which have since become known as Hindu-Arabic numerals - were
soon adopted by the entire Islamic world. Later, with translations of Al-
Khwarizmi’s work into Latin by Adelard of Bath and others in the 12th Muhammad Al-Khwarizmi (c.780-
Century, and with the influence of Fibonacci’s “Liber Abaci” they would 850 CE)

be adopted throughout Europe as

well.
Al-Khwarizmi’s other important An example of Al-Khwarizmi’s “completing the square” method for
contribution was algebra, a word solving quadratic equations
derived from the title of a
mathematical text he published in
about 830 called “Al-Kitab al-mukhtasar fi hisab al-jabr wa'l-muqabala” (“The Compendious Book on
Calculation by Completion and Balancing”). Al-Khwarizmi wanted to go from the specific problems
considered by the Indians and Chinese to a more general way of analyzing problems, and in doing so he
created an abstract mathematical language which is used across the world today.

His book is considered the foundational text of modern algebra, although he did not employ the kind of
algebraic notation used today (he used words to explain the problem, and diagrams to solve it). But the
book provided an exhaustive account of solving polynomial equations up to the second degree, and
introduced for the first time the fundamental algebraic methods of “reduction” (rewriting an expression in a
simpler form), “completion” (moving a negative quantity from one side of the equation to the other side
and changing its sign) and “balancing” (subtraction of the same quantity from both sides of an equation,
and the cancellation of like terms on opposite sides).

In particular, Al-Khwarizmi developed a formula for systematically solving quadratic equations (equations
involving unknown numbers to the power of 2, or x2) by using the methods of completion and balancing to
reduce any equation to one of six standard forms, which were then solvable. He described the standard
forms in terms of "squares" (what would today be "x2"), "roots" (what would today be "x") and "numbers"
(regular constants, like 42), and identified the six types as: squares equal roots (ax2 = bx), squares equal
number (ax2 = c), roots equal number (bx = c), squares and roots equal number (ax2 + bx = c), squares and
number equal roots (ax2 + c = bx), and roots and number equal squares (bx + c = ax2).

Al-Khwarizmi is usually credited with the development of lattice (or sieve) multiplication method of
multiplying large numbers, a method algorithmically equivalent to long multiplication. His lattice method
was later introduced into Europe by Fibonacci.

In addition to his work in mathematics, Al-Khwarizmi made important contributions to astronomy, also
largely based on methods from India, and he developed the first quadrant (an instrument used to
determine time by observations of the Sun or stars), the second most widely used astronomical
instrument during the Middle Ages after the astrolabe. He also produced a revised and completed version
of Ptolemy's “Geography”, consisting of a list of 2,402 coordinates of cities throughout the known world.