Like many of the cultures it studies, the Department of History of Mathematics has had innovative leaders, a golden era and, inevitably, a fall from glory. This year could witness the end of a ...

While American children once learned to add by reading a poster of animals and birds, they do it now by playing games on computers. Each step in between—whether it be a box of blocks or exercises ...

Katie has a PhD in maths, specializing in the intersection of dynamical systems and number theory. She reports on topics from maths and history to society and animals. Katie has a PhD in maths, ...

How is math education different now from, say, in President Abraham Lincoln’s day? A new online exhibition sheds light on math’s long history. The exhibition is a collaboration between the National ...

Tucked away in a seemingly forgotten corner of the Istanbul Archaeology Museum, Daniel Mansfield found what may solve one of ancient math’s biggest questions. First exhumed in 1894 from what is now ...

The history of math is murky, predating any written records. When did humans first grasp the basic concept of a number? What about size and magnitude, or form and shape? In my math history courses and ...

The history of mathematics is inseparable from the history of human civilisation. What began as practical tools for counting livestock, measuring land, and recording trade gradually evolved into a ...

Use left and right arrow keys to seek audio. A tablet that dates back some 3700 years has been found to be the oldest example of applied geometry in the history of mathematics. Australian ...

David E. Dunning explores how mathematical notation is a social, world-building technology. It’s natural to think of math as being fundamentally abstract. Whether it’s invented or discovered, its ...

THE two volumes of this history (the first of which was noticed in NATURE of November 15, 1924) deal with the subject from two different aspects. The first volume, described as a “General Survey,” is ...