You will prepare two research papers for this course:
Biographies |
Original Sources |
| Pythagoras of Samos and his school
Archimedes of Syracuse Claudius Ptolemy Theon and Hypatia of Alexandria Mohammad al-Khwarizmi Thabit ibn Qurra Gerbert d'Aurillac Ibn al-Haytham Mohammad al-Biruni Omar Khayyam Nasir al-Din al-Tusi Leonardo of Pisa Qin Jiushao Levi ben Gerson Nicole Oresme Regiomontanus Luca Pacioli Albrecht Dürer Niccolo Tartaglia Girolamo Cardano Pedro Nunes Gerard Mercator Rafael Bombelli François Viète Tycho Brahe Matteo Ricci John Napier Henry Briggs Galileo Galilei Johannes Kepler Geregory of St. Vincent Marin Mersenne Girad Desargues René Descartes Bonaventura Cavalieri Pierre de Fermat John Wallis Blaise Pascal Christian Huygens Isaac Newton Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Johann Bernoulli |
Rhind Papyrus, problem 36
Zeno's paradoxes (Aristotle's Physics VI. ii. 233a21-233b17; VI. ix. 239b5-240a18) Eudoxus' method of exhaustion (Euclid's Elements xii.2) Euclid's geometry (Elements xiii.10) Archimedes' Measurement of the Circle Archimedes' Quadrature of the Parabola (Intro. and Props. 1-3, 20-24) Apollonius' Conics (Greeting, definitions, Props. 1-3, 11-14, 31-33) Ptolemy's Almagest (i.10-11) Diophantus' Arithmetica, Books I-II Qin Jiushao's Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Arts, Problem i.4 Bhaskara's Lilivati, v. 261-272 al-Khwarizmi's Book of Algebra and Almucabola, Introduction; Chap. iv; Geometrical demonstrations; Rules corresponding to the six chapters of Algebra Levi ben Gerson's Art of the Calculator, problems 63-68 Leonardo of Pisa's Book of Squares Nicole Oresme's Questions concerning Euclid's geometry, Question 10 Girolamo Cardano's The Great Art, chs. 11-12, 26-27 François Viète's Introduction to the Analytic Art, chs. I and V Simon Stevin's De Thiende Regiomontanus' On Triangles, Book III Henry Briggs' Arithmetica Logarithmica, chs. 1-5 Galileo Galilei's Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations (Third Day: On Naturally Accelerated Motion, through Corollary I of Proposition II, Theorem II) René Descartes' La Géométrie, beginning of the First Book Pierre de Fermat's letter to Bernard Frénicle, October 10, 1640 Blaise Pascal's Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle Johannes Kepler's New Solid Geometry of Wine Casks, Theorems 18-19 Bonaventura Cavalieri's Six Geometrical Exercises, Props. iv.19-23 Evangelista Torricelli's On the acute hyberbolic solid Gregory of St. Vincent's Opus geometricam, Book VI, Part 4, Propositions 102-109, 125-130 John Wallis' Arithmetica Infinitorum, Propositions 121, 132, 184, 189, 191 Isaac Newton's Principia mathematica, Bk. I, Sect. I, Lemmas I, II, IX and Sect. III, Prop. XI, Problem VI Gottfried Leibniz' A new method for maxima and minima... |
Your first best resource for biographical information is the Dictionary of Scientific Biography (Ref Q141 .D5). Follow the references here to other classical resources. The DSB was published in the early 1980s, so new scholarship will not be referenced here. Some valuable information can be found at the MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive (but be advised that errors have been found in this resource).
Standard references to find anumber of the original sources are
which can be found on reserve at the library. Some of the
original sources listed here will not be easily uncovered; check
with me if you have difficulties tracking something down.