History of mathematics
History. Four thousand years of mathematical thought.
Six eras, from the clay tablets of Babylon and the Elements of Euclid to Hilbert's formalist program and the Millennium Prize Problems of our own century.
Mathematics in Antiquity
From counting stones and clay tablets to the axiomatic geometry of Euclid — how mathematics became a discipline in the ancient world.
Read →Medieval and Renaissance Mathematics
The Islamic Golden Age preserves and extends Greek mathematics. Algebra takes shape. Hindu-Arabic numerals reach Europe. The Renaissance solves the cubic.
Read →The Age of Calculus: 17th and 18th Centuries
Descartes unites algebra and geometry. Newton and Leibniz invent calculus. Euler writes everything. Two centuries that made modern mathematics possible.
Read →The 19th Century
Rigor comes to analysis. Non-Euclidean geometry opens new worlds. Group theory is born. The foundations of modern mathematics are poured.
Read →Mathematics in the 20th Century
Hilbert's program. Gödel's incompleteness. The Bourbaki revolution. The proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. A century that redefined what mathematics is.
Read →Hilbert's 23 Problems (1900)
David Hilbert's list of 23 unsolved problems, presented at the 1900 International Congress of Mathematicians in Paris — the defining research agenda of the 20th century.
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