Thursday 13 March 2014

History of Mathematics


Mathematics is the science of numbers. Mathematics is not aninvention. Discoveries and laws of science are not considered inventions. Inventions are material things and processes. However, there is a history of mathematics, a relationship between mathematics and inventions, and mathematical instruments are considered inventions.
According to Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times, mathematics as an organized science did not exist before the classical Greeks of the period from 600 to 300 BC entered upon the scene. There were, however, prior civilizations in which the beginnings or rudiments of mathematics were created.
When civilization began to trade, a need to count was created. When humans traded goods, they needed a way to count the goods and to calculate the cost of those goods. The very first device for counting numbers was the human hand. To count beyond ten fingers, mankind used natural markers, rocks or shells. From that point, counting boards and the abacus were invented.

Abacus
One of the first tools for counting invented, the abacus was invented around 1200 A.D. in China.
Accounting
The innovative Italians of the Renaissance (fourteenth through sixteenth century) are widely acknowledged to be the fathers of modern accounting.
Algebra The first treatise on algebra was written by Diophantus of Alexandria in the 3rd century AD. Algebra comes from the Arabic word al-jabr an ancient medical term meaning "the reunion of broken parts.''
Archimedes
Archimedes was a mathematician and inventor from ancient Greece, best known for his discovery of the relation between the surface and volume of a sphere and its circumscribing cyclinder, for his formulation of a hydrostatic principle (Archimedes' principle) and for inventing the Archimedes screw (a device for raising water).
Differential
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (b. 1646, d. 1716) was a German philosopher, mathematician, and logician who is probably most well known for having invented the differential and integral calculus (independently of Sir Isaac Newton).
Graph
A graph is a pictorial representation of statistical data or of a functional relationship between variables. William Playfair (1759-1823) is generally viewed as the inventor of most of graphical forms used to display data, including: line plots, bar chart, and pie chart.
Logarithms and the Decimal Point
John Napier was the Scottish mathematician who invented logarithms and the decimal point.
Pythagoreanism
Pythagoreanism is a school of philosophy school and a religious brotherhood, believed to have been founded by Pythagoras of Samos, who settled in Croton in southern Italy about 525 BC. The group had a profound effect on the development of mathematics.
Protractor
An instrument used to construct and measure plane angles. The simple protractor looks like a semicircular disk marked with degrees, from 0º to180º. The simple protractor is an ancient device. The first complex protractor was created for plotting the position of a boat on navigational charts. Called a three-arm protractor or station pointer, it was invented in 1801, by Joseph Huddart, a U.S. naval captain. The centre arm is fixed, while the outer two are rotatable, capable of being set at any angle relative to the centre one.
Slide Rulers
Circular and rectangular slide rules, an instrument used for mathematical calculations were both invented by mathematician William Oughtred.
Zero
Zero was invented by the Hindu mathematicians Aryabhata and Varamihara in India around or shortly after the year 520 A.D.
Math Symbol
In 1557, the = sign first used by Robert Record. In 1631, >,< was introduced by Thomas Harriot.

Entry contributed by: Nur Farhana and Ihdini Jamsyid

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