Around 1900 B.C., a student in the Sumerian city of Nippur, in what’s now Iraq, copied a multiplication table onto a clay tablet. Some 4,000 years later, that schoolwork survives, as do the student’s ...

IN a recent number of NATURE (June 30) there appeared a review of a book by G. Mannoury on the philosophy of mathematics, and the reviewer emphasised a statement of the author to the effect that the ...

Mathematics in the French Revolution -- Poncelet (and pole and polar) -- Theorems in projective geometry -- Poncelet's traité -- Duality and the duality controversy -- Poncelet and Chasles -- Lambert ...

THE history of mathematics has an image problem. It is often presented as a meeting of minds among ancient Greeks who became masters of logic. Pythagoras, Euclid and their pals honed the tools for ...

THE book before us is Part 1 of a history which is intended to consist of three parts. This first part deals only with the history of the numeral notation and of arithmetic; the second will be devoted ...