University Of Zakho

College Of Engineering
Mechanical Department

History of Mathematics

Prepared by: Supervised by:

Yunis Mohamed Mr. Ahmed Jawad
AbdulWahid Shamsadin
Muhaned Abdulrahman
Orans Khalaf
Abstract
This report deals with mathematics in general. It will present the general history
and the main concepts of mathematics. The major aims of this report is to introduce
the importance of the history of Greece, Egyptians and Islamic mathematics.
Firstly, the report will mention the main definitions of mathematics. Then it will
present the main Greek and Islamic mathematicians.
Finally, the report will explain the main developments of mathematics of Egyptians.

1
Contents

Introduction ....................................................................................................... 3

Greeks Mathematics ........................................................................................... 4

Mathematics In Ancient Egypt ............................................................................ 7

Islamic Mathematics ......................................................................................... 10

Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 12

Reference ......................................................................................................... 13

2
Introduction
counting, measuring, and describing the shapes of objects. It deals with logical
reasoning and quantitative calculation, and its development has involved an
increasing degree of idealization and abstraction of its subject matter. Since the
17th century, mathematics has been an indispensable adjunct to the physical
sciences and technology, and in more recent times it has assumed a similar role in
the quantitative aspects of the life sciences.In many cultures—under the stimulus
of the needs of practical pursuits, such as commerce and agriculture—
mathematics has developed far beyond basic counting. This growth has been
greatest in societies complex enough to sustain these activities and to provide
leisure for contemplation and the opportunity to build on the achievements of
earlier mathematicians.All mathematical systems (for example, Euclidean
geometry) are combinations of sets of axioms and of theorems that can be logically
deduced from the axioms. Inquiries into the logical and philosophical basis of
mathematics reduce to questions of whether the axioms of a given system ensure
its completeness and its consistency. For full treatment of this aspect, see
mathematics, foundations of.

3
Greeks Mathematics
The word Greek comes across our educational years time and time again. In history
we read about them in Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman Empire, in religion we read
about the legendary Greek Gods, in language we read about their symbolism and
literature. The Ancient Greeks are famously known for their history, literature, arts,
science, philosophy and religion. However there is one field the Greeks have
mastered in, mathematics that we do not appreciate as much as we should be.
Therefore this article summarizes the greatest personalities in the ancient Greek
history. Being a mathematician is not an easy task but the Greek seems to have
mastered in the field. Here is a list of the top 15 famous Greek mathematicians and
their contributions!

1. Euclid

He was also known as Euclid of Alexandria and referred as the father of geometry
deduced the Euclidean geometry. The name has it all, which in Greek means
“renowned, glorious”. He worked his entire life in the field of mathematics and
made revolutionary contributions to geometry .

4
 2. Pythagoras

The famous ‘Pythagoras theorem’, yes the same one we have struggled
through in our childhood during our challenging math classes. This genius
achieved in his contributions in mathematics and become the father of the
theorem of Pythagoras. Born is Samos, Greece and fled off to Egypt and
maybe India. This great mathematician is most prominently known for, what
else but, for his Pythagoras theorem.

. Pythagoras Theorem
Pythagoras Theorem is an important topic in Mathes, which explains the relation
between the sides of a right-angled triangle. It is also sometimes called the
Pythagorean Theorem. The formula and proof of this theorem are explained here
with examples.Pythagoras theorem is basically used to find the length of an
unknown side and angle of a triangle. By this theorem, we can derive base,
perpendicular and hypotenuse formula. Let us learn mathematics of Pythagorean
theorem in detail here.

5
 3. Hypatia

Hypatia of Alexandria was the daughter of a mathematician and took her father as
an inspiration to become a mathematician herself. Not only was she a
mathematician but a philosopher as well. She taught as the head at a school, her
subject was the knowledge of Plato and Aristotle. She is the first woman to make
valuable contributions in the field of mathematics. Hypatia was the first woman to
take the bold step to pursue with her dreams and became an inspiration to many
young women who became the world’s most famous geniuses ever.

4. Aristotle

Aristotle had a diverse knowledge over

various areas including mathematics,
geology, physics, metaphysics, biology,
medicine and psychology. He was a
pupil of Plato therefore it’s not a
surprise that he had a vast knowledge
and made contributions towards
Platonism. Tutored Alexander the Great and established a library which aided in
the production of hundred of books.

6
Mathematics In Ancient Egypt
The introduction of writing in Egypt in the predynastic period (c. 3000 BCE) brought
with it the formation of a special class of literate professionals, the scribes. By virtue
of their writing skills, the scribes took on all the duties of a civil service: record
keeping, tax accounting, the management of public works (building projects and
the like), even the prosecution of war through overseeing military supplies and
payrolls. Young men enrolled in scribal schools to learn the essentials of the trade,
which included not only reading and writing but also the basics of mathematics.
One of the texts popular as a copy exercise in the schools of the New Kingdom
(13th century BCE) was a satiric letter in which one scribe Greeks mathematic
Hori, taunts his rival, Amen-em-opet, for his incompetence as an adviser and
manager. “You are the clever scribe at the head of the troops,” Hori chides at one
point,a ramp is to be built, 730 cubits long, 55 cubits wide, with 120
compartments—it is 60 cubits high, 30 cubits in the middle…and the generals and
the scribes turn to you and say, “You are a clever scribe, your name is famous. Is
there anything you don’t know? Answer us, how many bricks are needed?” Let each
compartment be 30 cubits by 7 cubits.This problem, and three others like it in the
same letter, cannot be solved without further data. But the point of the humour is
clear, as Hori challenges his rival with these hard, but typical, tasks.What is known
of Egyptian mathematics tallies well with the tests posed by the scribe Hori. The
information comes primarily from two long papyrus documents that once served
as textbooks within scribal schools. The Rhind papyrus (in the British Museum) is a
copy made in the 17th century BCE of a text two centuries older still. In it is found
a long table of fractional parts to help with division, followed by the solutions of 84
specific problems in arithmetic and geometry. The Golenishchev papyrus (in the
Moscow Museum of Fine Arts), dating from the 19th century BCE, presents 25
problems of a similar type. These problems reflect well the functions the scribes
would perform, for they deal with how to distribute beer and bread as wages, for
example, and how to measure the areas of fields as well as the volumes of pyramids
and other solids.

7
1-The numeral system and arithmetic operations
The Egyptians, like the Romans after them, expressed numbers according to a
decimal scheme, using separate symbols for 1, 10, 100, 1,000, and so on; each
symbol appeared in the expression for a number as many times as the value it
represented occurred in the number itself. For example, mathematics stood for 24.
This rather cumbersome notation was used within the hieroglyphic writing found
in stone inscriptions and other formal texts, but in the papyrus documents the
scribes employed a more convenient abbreviated script, called hieratic writing,
where, for example, 24 was written mathematics. In such a system, addition and
subtraction amount to counting how many symbols of each kind there are in the
numerical expressions and then rewriting with the resulting number of symbols.
The texts that survive do not reveal what, if any, special procedures the scribes
used to assist in this. But for multiplication they introduced a method of successive
doubling. For example, to multiply 28 by 11, one constructs a table of multiples of
28 like the following:

2-Geometry
The geometric problems in the papyri seek measurements of figures, like rectangles
and triangles of given base and height, by means of suitable arithmetic operations.
In a more complicated problem, a rectangle is sought whose area is 12 and whose
height is ½ + ¼ times its base (Golenishchev papyrus, problem 6). To solve the

8
problem, the ratio is inverted and multiplied by the area, yielding 16; the square
root of the result (4) is the base of the rectangle, and ½ + ¼ times 4, or 3, is the
height. The entire process is analogous to the process of solving the algebraic
equation for the problem (x × ¾x = 12), though without the use of a letter for the
unknown. An interesting procedure is used to find the area of the circle (Rhind
papyrus, problem 50): 1/9 of the diameter is discarded, and the result is squared.
For example, if the diameter is 9, the area is set equal to 64. The scribe recognized
that the area of a circle is proportional to the square of the diameter and assumed
for the constant of proportionality (that is, π/4) the value 64/81. This is a rather
good estimate, being about 0.6 percent too large.
(It is not as close, however, as the now common estimate of 31/7, first proposed by
Archimedes, which is only about 0.04 percent too large.) But there is nothing in the
papyri indicating that the scribes were aware that this rule was only approximate
rather than exact.A remarkable result is the rule for the volume of the truncated
pyramid (Golenishchev papyrus, problem 14). The scribe assumes the height to be
6, the base to be a square of side 4, and the top a square of side 2. He multiplies
one-third the height times 28, finding the volume to be 56; here 28 is computed
from 2 × 2 + 2 × 4 + 4 × 4. Since this is correct, it can be assumed that the scribe also
knew the general rule: A = (h/3)(a2 + ab + b2). How the scribes actually derived the
rule is a matter for debate, but it is reasonable to suppose that they were aware of
related rules, such as that for the volume of a pyramid: one-third the height times
the area of the base.The Egyptians employed the equivalent of similar triangles to
measure distances. For instance, the seked of a pyramid is stated as the number of
palms in the horizontal corresponding to a rise of one cubit (seven palms). Thus, if
the seked is 51/4 and the base is 140 cubits, the height becomes 931/3 cubits
(Rhind papyrus, problem 57). The Greek sage Thales of Miletus (6th century BCE) is
said to have measured the height of pyramids by means of their shadows (the
report derives from Hieronymus, a disciple of Aristotle in the 4th century BCE). In
light of the seked computations, however, this report must indicate an aspect of
Egyptian surveying that extended back at least 1,000 years before the time of
Thales.

9
Islamic Mathematics
Islamic mathematics refers to the mathematical theories and practices that
flourished in the parts of the world where Islam was the dominant religious and
cultural influence. Along with transmissions of Greek mathematics, Muslim
mathematicians in the Islamic Medieval Empire expanded on the Greek
concepts of geometry, astronomy, medicine, and arithmetic. Muslim scholars
also consolidated Greek and Indian mathematics to form the beginnings of
modern algebra. The House of Wisdom (bayt al-hikma) was established by the
Abbasid caliph al-Rashid, and flourished under the caliph al-Ma’mun. It was at
the House of Wisdom that al-Khwarizmi and others translated Greek and Indian
mathematical and scientific works. The historical developmentof algebra will
be the focus of this first chapter.

1. Al-Khwarizmi
Muhammad Ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, more commonly known as Al-
Khwarizmi, was born in in 780, and was the fatger of a new era in Islamic
Mathematics. Al Khwarizmi was the most notable Islamic Mathematicians
during the Islamic Golden Age. The basis of Algebra was found by Al Khwarizmi,
who discovered it in the early 9th century. The word Algebra is derived from
the Islamic word “Al-Jabra”, which is literally translated into “reunion of broken
parts”. In the book he wrote, he solves over a hundred quadric equationswith
explanations. Al Khwarizmi confined his discussion to equations of the first and
second degrees (Famous Scientists. org, 2013). He is also known as the person
who introduced the Western world to the decimal numerical system, which is
the most widely used number system today.

10
2. Abu Al-Hasan
Abu Al-Hasan, also known as Alhazen, lived from 965 till 1040 during the
Islamic Golden Age. Although Carls Friedrich Gauss is credited to being the first
person to efficiently add up the first hundred numbers, Abu Al-Hasan is
believed to have done it before. Al-Hasan lived in the 10th and 11th centuries,
and had success in many other fields too, including Astronomy, Philosophy and
Engineering. He did a lot of work on the number theory, and came across
theories based upon perfect numbers. Still, these theories were not credited at
the time, as most thought that he did not have enough evidence to prove it was
true. He created theories linking algebra to geometry. His theory for adding the
first 100 numbers was proved with the help of geometry, as it was his focal
point.

3. Omar Khayyam
Omar Khayyam lived from 1048 till 1131, and was a key figure in the
Mathematical area during the Islamic Golden Age. He wrote one of the most
famous treatises of Algebra. Omar Khayyam created the first theories known
about parallels in quadrilaterals. He also found out how to solve roots of any
degree, laying down some of the principles of Algebra about a century and a
half after Al Khwarizmi produced the cores of Algebra. Khayyam had notable
works in geometry, particularly on the theory of proportions (Famous
Scientists. org, 2013). His works are evident in a book he published, called
“Explanations of the Difficulties in the Postulates of Euclid”. Omar Khayyam was
more famously known as a scientist, and also published some great poems. At
the time, Islam's population was all rounded, simply great in many different
fields. These influential beings shaped Islam's Golden Age.

11
Conclusion
In conclusion, this study explained the main points about the history of
mathematics in different countries. It showed that mathematics has been
significant in different times and different places of the world. This report also
found out that the main developments of mathematics was happened by Greeks
such as Pythagoras theory. The report also showed that Egyptians played an
important role in developing geometry. It also presented that the concept of
algebra was found by an Islamic mathematician , Al-Khwarizmi.

12
Reference

Struik, D. J. (2012). A concise history of mathematics. Courier Corporation.

Rossi, C. (2004). Architecture and mathematics in ancient Egypt. Cambridge

University Press.

Berggren, J. L. (2017). Episodes in the mathematics of medieval Islam. Springer.

Boyer, C. B., & Merzbach, U. C. (2011). A history of mathematics. John Wiley & Sons.

13