Course Title: History of Mathematics

Course Code: SEMA 30013

Course Credits: 3 units

Course Description:

The course presents the humanistic aspects of mathematics which provides the historical
context and timeline that led to the present understanding and applications of the different
branches of mathematics Topics included in this course are not very technical and rigid aspects
of mathematics; rather they are early, interesting, and light developments of the field. They are
intended to enrich the background of the students in the hope that the students find value and
inspiration in the historical approach to the mathematical concepts.

Course Learning Outcomes:

At the end of the course, the pre-service teachers should be able to:

A. Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the historical facts and landmarks

that led to the development of the different branches and schools of thought in
mathematics;
B. Show critical and creative thinking in analyzing popular problems involving
foundational concepts in mathematics; and
C. Manifest appreciation for mathematics as a dynamic field through sharing of
personal experiences of enlightenment relative to the evolution of the different branches
of mathematics.
Course Content

Course Contents
The Development of mathematics: ancient period
Unit 1
Origins of Mathematics: Egypt and Babylonia
Mathematics of Ancient Greece
The Development of mathematics: a historical overview:
Medieval Period
Unit 2
Medieval Period and the Renaissance
Euler, Fermat and Descartes
The Development of mathematics: a historical overview:
Modern Period
Unit 3 Non-Euclidean Geometries
Birth of set theory and problems in the foundations of
mathematics
The Nature of Mathematics
Unit 4 What is mathematics?
Is mathematics invented or created?
Unit 5 Issues and Aspects
Mathematics and technology: the role of computers

Course Grading System

Class Standing 70%

• Submitted Activities
• Portfolio/Output

Final Examination 30%

FINAL RATING 100%
Unit 1 : The Development of mathematics: ancient period

The history of mathematics is nearly as old as humanity itself. Since antiquity,

mathematics has been fundamental to advances in science, engineering, and philosophy. It has
evolved from simple counting, measurement and calculation, and the systematic study of the
shapes and motions of physical objects, through the application of abstraction, imagination and
logic, to the broad, complex and often abstract discipline we know today.
From the notched bones of early man to the mathematical advances brought about by settled
agriculture in Mesopotamia and Egypt and the revolutionary developments of ancient
Greece and its Hellenistic empire, the story of mathematics is a long and impressive one.

The East carried on the baton, particularly China, India and the medieval Islamic empire,
before the focus of mathematical innovation moved back to Europe in the late Middle
Ages and Renaissance. Then, a whole new series of revolutionary developments occurred
in 17th Century and 18th Century Europe, setting the stage for the increasing complexity and
abstraction of 19th Century mathematics, and finally the audacious and sometimes devastating
discoveries of the 20th Century.

Origins of Mathematics: Egypt and Babylonia

Sumer (a region of Mesopotamia,

modern-day Iraq) was the birthplace of
writing, the wheel, agriculture, the arch,
the plow, irrigation and many other
innovations, and is often referred to as
the Cradle of Civilization. The Sumerians
developed the earliest known writing
system – a pictographic writing system
known as cuneiform script, using wedge-
shaped characters inscribed on baked
clay tablets – and this has meant that we actually have more knowledge of ancient Sumerian and
Babylonian mathematics than of early Egyptian mathematics. Indeed, we even have what appear
to school exercises in arithmetic and geometric problems.
EGYPTIAN MATHEMATICS – NUMBERS & NUMERALS

The early Egyptians settled along the fertile Nile valley as early as about 6000 BCE, and
they began to record the patterns of lunar phases and the seasons, both for agricultural and
religious reasons.

The Pharaoh’s surveyors used measurements based on body parts (a palm was the width
of the hand, a cubit the measurement from elbow to fingertips) to measure land and buildings
very early in Egyptian history, and a decimal numeric system was developed based on our ten
fingers. The oldest mathematical text from ancient Egypt discovered so far, though, is the Moscow
Papyrus, which dates from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom around 2000 – 1800 BCE.

Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic numerals

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN NUMBER SYSTEM

It is thought that the Egyptians introduced the earliest fully-developed base 10 numeration
system at least as early as 2700 BCE (and probably much early). Written numbers used a stroke
for units, a heel-bone symbol for tens, a coil of rope for hundreds and a lotus plant for thousands,
as well as other hieroglyphic symbols for higher powers of ten up to a million. However, there was
no concept of place value, so larger numbers were rather unwieldy (although a million required
just one character, a million minus one required fifty-four characters).
The Rhind Papyrus, dating from around 1650 BCE, is a kind of instruction manual in
arithmetic and geometry, and it gives us explicit demonstrations of how multiplication and division
was carried out at that time. It also contains evidence of other mathematical knowledge, including
unit fractions, composite and prime numbers, arithmetic, geometric and harmonic means, and
how to solve first order linear equations as well as arithmetic and geometric series. The Berlin
Papyrus, which dates from around 1300 BCE, shows that ancient Egyptians could solve second-
order algebraic (quadratic) equations.
 Multiplication, for example, was achieved by a process of repeated doubling of the number
to be multiplied on one side and of one on the other, essentially a kind of multiplication of binary
factors similar to that used by modern computers (see the

example). These corresponding blocks of counters could then be used as a kind of multiplication
reference table: first, the combination of powers of two which add up to the number to be multiplied
by was isolated, and then the corresponding blocks of counters on the other side yielded the
answer. This effectively made use of the concept of binary numbers, over 3,000 years
before Leibniz introduced it into the west, and many more years before the development of the
computer was to fully explore its potential.

Ancient Egyptian method of multiplication

Practical problems of trade and the market led to the development of a notation for
fractions. The papyri which have come down to us demonstrate the use of unit fractions based on
the symbol of the Eye of Horus, where each part of the eye represented a different fraction, each
half of the previous one (i.e. half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth, thirty-second, sixty-fourth), so that the
total was one-sixty-fourth short of a whole, the first known example of a geometric series.
 Unit fractions could also be used for simple division sums. For example, if they needed to
divide 3 loaves among 5 people, they would first divide two of the loaves into thirds and the third
loaf into fifths, then they would divide the left over third from the second loaf into five pieces. Thus,
each person would receive one-third plus one-fifth plus one-fifteenth (which totals three-fifths, as
we would expect).
The Egyptians approximated the area of a circle by using shapes whose area they did
know. They observed that the area of a circle of diameter 9 units, for example, was very close to
the area of a square with sides of 8 units, so that the area of circles of other

diameters could be obtained by multiplying the diameter by 8⁄9 and then squaring it. This gives an
effective approximation of π accurate to within less than one percent.

Ancient Egyptian method of division

 The pyramids themselves are another indication of the sophistication of Egyptian
mathematics. Setting aside claims that the pyramids are first known structures to observe the
golden ratio of 1 : 1.618 (which may have occurred for purely aesthetic, and not mathematical,
reasons), there is certainly evidence that they knew the formula for the volume of a pyramid
– 1⁄3 times the height times the length times the width – as well as of a truncated or clipped
pyramid.

They were also aware, long before Pythagoras, of the rule that a triangle with sides 3, 4
and 5 units yields a perfect right angle, and Egyptian builders used ropes knotted at intervals of
3, 4 and 5 units in order to ensure exact right angles for their stonework (in fact, the 3-4-5 right
triangle is often called “Egyptian”).

As in Egypt, Sumerian mathematics initially developed largely as a response to

bureaucratic needs when their civilization settled and developed agriculture (possibly as early as
the 6th millennium BCE) for the measurement of plots of land, the taxation of

individuals, etc. In addition, the Sumerians and Babylonians needed to describe quite large
numbers as they attempted to chart the course of the night sky and develop their sophisticated
lunar calendar.
They were perhaps the first people to assign symbols to groups of objects in an attempt
to make the description of larger numbers easier. They moved from using separate tokens or
symbols to represent sheaves of wheat, jars of oil, etc, to the more abstract use of a symbol for
specific numbers of anything.
Starting as early as the 4th millennium BCE, they began using a small clay cone to
represent one, a clay ball for ten, and a large cone for sixty. Over the course of the third
millennium, these objects were replaced by cuneiform equivalents so that numbers could be
written with the same stylus that was being used for the words in the text. A rudimentary model
of the abacus was probably in use in Sumeria from as early as 2700 – 2300 BCE.

SUMERIAN & BABYLONIAN NUMBER SYSTEM: BASE 60

 Sumerian and Babylonian mathematics was based on a sexegesimal, or base 60,
numeric system, which could be counted physically using the twelve knuckles on one hand the
five fingers on the other hand. Unlike those of the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, Babylonian
numbers used a true place-value system, where digits written in the left column represented larger
values, much as in the modern decimal system, although of course using base 60 not base 10.
Thus, in the Babylonian system represented 3,600 plus 60 plus 1, or 3,661. Also, to
represent the numbers 1 – 59 within each place value, two distinct symbols were used, a unit
symbol ( ) and a ten symbol ( ) which were combined in a similar way to the familiar system
of Roman numerals (e.g. 23 would be shown as ). Thus, represents 60 plus 23, or
83. However, the number 60 was represented by the same symbol as the number 1 and, because
they lacked an equivalent of the decimal point, the actual place value of a symbol often had to be
inferred from the context.

Babylonian
Numerals

It has been conjectured that Babylonian advances in mathematics were probably

facilitated by the fact that 60 has many divisors (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30 and 60 – in fact,
60 is the smallest integer divisible by all integers from 1 to 6), and the continued modern-day
usage of of 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and 360 (60 x 6) degrees in a circle,
are all testaments to the ancient Babylonian system. It is for similar reasons that 12 (which has
factors of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6) has been such a popular multiple historically (e.g. 12 months, 12 inches,
12 pence, 2 x 12 hours, etc).
 The Babylonians also developed another revolutionary mathematical concept, something
else that the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans did not have, a circle character for zero, although
its symbol was really still more of a placeholder than a number in its own right.

Babylonian Clay tablets

We have evidence of the development of a complex system of metrology in Sumer

from about 3000 BCE, and multiplication and reciprocal (division) tables, tables of squares,
square roots and cube roots, geometrical exercises and division problems from around 2600 BCE
onwards. Later Babylonian tablets dating from about 1800 to 1600 BCE cover topics as varied
as fractions, algebra, methods for solving linear, quadratic and even some cubic equations, and
the calculation of regular reciprocal pairs (pairs of number which multiply together to give 60).
One Babylonian tablet gives an approximation to √2 accurate to an astonishing five
decimal places. Others list the squares of numbers up to 59, the cubes of numbers up to 32 as
well as tables of compound interest. Yet another gives an estimate for π of 3 1⁄8 (3.125, a
reasonable approximation of the real value of 3.1416).
The idea of square numbers and quadratic equations (where the unknown quantity is
multiplied by itself, e.g. x2) naturally arose in the context of the measurement of land, and
Babylonian mathematical tablets give us the first ever evidence of the solution of quadratic
equations. The Babylonian approach to solving them usually revolved around a kind of geometric
game of slicing up and rearranging shapes, although the use of algebra and quadratic equations
also appears. At least some of the examples we have appear to indicate problem-solving for its
own sake rather than in order to resolve a concrete practical problem.
The Babylonians used geometric shapes in their buildings and design and in dice for the
leisure games which were so popular in their society, such as the ancient game of backgammon.
Their geometry extended to the calculation of the areas of rectangles, triangles and trapezoids,
as well as the volumes of simple shapes such as bricks and cylinders (although not pyramids).
Plimpton 322 clay tablet
The famous and controversial Plimpton 322 clay tablet, believed to date from around
1800 BCE, suggests that the Babylonians may well have known the secret of right-angled
triangles (that the square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the square of the other two sides)
many centuries before the Greek Pythagoras. The tablet appears to list 15 perfect Pythagorean
triangles with whole number sides, although some claim that they were merely academic
exercises, and not deliberate manifestations of Pythagorean triples.
Babylonian Clay tablets from c. 2100 BCE showing a problem concerning the area of an
irregular shape

ACTIVITY 1
1. By which BC two earlier nations had joined to form a single Egyptian nation
under a single ruler?

a. 38 b. 300 c. 3000 d. 30

2. Knowing which season was about to arrive was vital and the study of astronomy
developed to provide calendar information?

a. Summer b. winter c. spring d. None of the above

3. The Egyptians used________ as base number

a. 10 b. 100 c. 56 d. 30

4. Why did Egyptians introduced a new symbol for 10?

a. Because it was fun to invent new symbols

b. Because there would be too many lines
 c. Because they were bored of the lines
d. None of the above

5. What was the symbol for 10000 in Egyptian Mathematics?

a. Single pencil b. Two fingers c. Single finger d. A tadpole

6. How can we write 345?

a. Three coil of rope and four piece of rope and five lines
b. Two coil of rope and four piece of rope
c. Three piece of rope and four coil of rope and five lines
d. None of the above

7. Tell the similarities between Hindu Arabic form and Egyptian form.

a. Base as ten
b. The way they represent the 1 is just a line. Usually, when we write a 1 on a piece of
paper its just a line.
c. Ten as piece of rope
d. There no similarities

8. The system of Egyptian Numerals was used In Egypt around________until the first
millennium.

a. 2,888 BC b. 2,888 AD c. 2,889 BC d. 2889 AC

9. How many characters are there in the Egyptian numerals?

a. 9 b. 7 c. 6 d. 5

10. The Egyptian number system was written in____

a. hieroglyphics
b. hierogly
c. hair
d. hierlogyph

11. Egyptians needed a symbol for zero.

a. true b. false

12. Meaning of Hieroglyph?

a. a character used in a system of pictorial writing, particularly that form used on

ancient Egyptian monuments.
b. name of the Egyptian civilization
c. a character used in a system of fictional writing, particularly that form used on
ancient Egyptian monuments.
 d. a character used in a system of pictorial writing, particularly that form used on
ancient indian monuments.

13. What kind of mathematical operations were used in the Egyptian number system?

a. papyrus, hieroglyphics.
b. paper and hieroglyphics.
c. Decimals
d. all of the above

14. Egyptian Numerals was used In Egypt around_____ until the first millennium.

a. 28888 BC b. 2887 AC c. 2888 AD d. 2888 BC

15. The Egyptians were are the first civilisation that used a civilised system of numbers.

a. True b. false c. both

Mathematics of Ancient Greece

As the Greek empire began to spread its sphere of influence into Asia
Minor, Mesopotamia and beyond, the Greeks were smart enough to adopt and adapt useful
elements from the societies they conquered. This was as true of their mathematics as anything
else, and they adopted elements of mathematics from both the Babylonians and the Egyptians.
But they soon started to make important contributions in their own right and, for the first time, we
can acknowledge contributions by individuals. By the Hellenistic period, the Greeks had presided
over one of the most dramatic and important revolutions in mathematical thought of all time.

Ancient Greek Herodianic numerals

Attic or Herodianic numerals

 The ancient Greek numeral system, known as Attic or Herodianic numerals, was fully
developed by about 450 BCE, and in regular use possibly as early as the 7th Century BCE. It was
a base 10 system similar to the earlier Egyptian one (and even more similar to the
later Roman system), with symbols for 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, 500 and 1,000 repeated as many times
needed to represent the desired number. Addition was done by totalling separately the symbols
(1s, 10s, 100s, etc) in the numbers to be added, and multiplication was a laborious process based
on successive doublings (division was based on the inverse of this process).

Thales’ Intercept Theorem

But most of Greek mathematics was based on geometry. Thales, one of the Seven
Sages of Ancient Greece, who lived on the Ionian coast of Asian Minor in the first half of the 6th
Century BCE, is usually considered to have been the first to lay down guidelines

for the abstract development of geometry, although what we know of his work (such as on similar
and right triangles) now seems quite elementary.
Thales established what has become known
as Thales’ Theorem, whereby if a triangle is drawn
within a circle with the long side as a diameter of the
circle, then the opposite angle will always be a right
angle (as well as some other related properties
derived from this). He is also credited with another
theorem, also known as Thales’ Theorem or
the Intercept Theorem, about the ratios of the line
segments that are created if two intersecting lines
are intercepted by a pair of parallels (and, by
extension, the ratios of the sides of similar triangles).
To some extent, however, the legend of the 6th Century BCE
mathematician Pythagoras of Samos has become synonymous with the birth of Greek
mathematics. Indeed, he is believed to have coined both the words “philosophy” (“love of
wisdom“) and “mathematics” (“that which is learned“). Pythagoras was perhaps the first to
realize that a complete system of mathematics could be constructed, where geometric elements
corresponded with numbers. Pythagoras’ Theorem (or the Pythagorean Theorem) is one of the
best known of all mathematical theorems. But he remains a controversial figure, as we will see,
and Greek mathematics was by no means limited to one man.

Thale’s Theorem
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PvSfDE6fKs

Three geometrical problems

Three geometrical problems in particular, often referred to as the Three Classical
Problems, and all to be solved by purely geometric means using only a straight edge and a
compass, date back to the early days of Greek geometry: “the squaring (or quadrature) of the
circle”, “the doubling (or duplicating) of the cube” and “the trisection of an angle”. These
intransigent problems were profoundly influential on future geometry and led to many fruitful
discoveries, although their actual solutions (or, as it turned out, the proofs of their impossibility)
had to wait until the 19th Century.

The Three Classical Problems

 Hippocrates of Chios (not to be confused with the great Greek physician Hippocrates of
Kos. A detailed biography here.) was one such Greek mathematician who applied himself to
these problems during the 5th Century BCE (his contribution to the “squaring the circle” problem
is known as the Lune of Hippocrates). His influential book “The Elements”, dating to around 440
BCE, was the first compilation of the elements of geometry, and his work was an important source
for Euclid‘s later work.

Squaring the Circle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfH4DtZGP3I
Doubling the Cube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ncc5A2xT78
Trisecting the Angle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VxMUhxkBqA

Zeno’s Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise

It was the Greeks who first grappled with the idea of infinity, such as described in the well-
known paradoxes attributed to the philosopher Zeno of Elea in the 5th Century BCE. The most
famous of his paradoxes is that of Achilles and the Tortoise, which describes a theoretical race
between Achilles and a tortoise. Achilles gives the much slower tortoise a head start, but by the
time Achilles reaches the tortoise’s starting point, the tortoise has already moved ahead. By the
time Achilles reaches that point, the tortoise has moved on again, etc, etc, so that in principle the
swift Achilles can never catch up with the slow tortoise.

Paradoxes such as this one and Zeno’s so-called Dichotomy Paradox are based on the
infinite divisibility of space and time, and rest on the idea that a half plus a quarter plus an eighth
plus a sixteenth, etc, etc, to infinity will never quite equal a whole. The paradox stems, however,
from the false assumption that it is impossible to complete an infinite number of discrete dashes
in a finite time, although it is extremely difficult to definitively prove the fallacy. The ancient Greek
Aristotle was the first of many to try to disprove the paradoxes, particularly as he was a firm
believer that infinity could only ever be potential and not real.
 Zeno’s Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise

Democritus, most famous for his prescient ideas about all matter being composed
of tiny atoms, was also a pioneer of mathematics and geometry in the 5th – 4th Century
BCE, and he produced works with titles like “On Numbers“, “On Geometrics“, “On
Tangencies“, “On Mapping” and “On Irrationals“, although these works have not survived.
We do know that he was among the first to observe that a cone (or pyramid) has one-
third the volume of a cylinder (or prism) with the same base and height, and he is perhaps
the first to have seriously considered the division of objects into an infinite number of
cross-sections.

However, it is certainly true that Pythagoras in particular greatly influenced those

who came after him, including Plato, who established his famous Academy in Athens in
387 BCE, and his protégé Aristotle, whose work on logic was regarded as definitive for
over two thousand years. Plato the mathematician is best known

for his description of the five Platonic solids, but the value of his work as a teacher and
popularizer of mathematics can not be overstated.
 Plato’s student Eudoxus of Cnidus is usually credited with the first implementation
of the “method of exhaustion” (later developed by Archimedes), an early method of
integration by successive approximations which he used for the calculation of the volume
of the pyramid and cone. He also developed a general theory of proportion, which was
applicable to incommensurable (irrational) magnitudes that cannot be expressed as a
ratio of two whole numbers, as well as to commensurable (rational) magnitudes, thus
extending Pythagoras’ incomplete ideas.

Perhaps the most important single contribution of the Greeks, though –

and Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle were all influential in this respect – was the idea of
proof, and the deductive method of using logical steps to prove or disprove theorems from
initial assumed axioms. Older cultures, like the Egyptians and the Babylonians, had relied
on inductive reasoning, that is using repeated observations to establish rules of thumb. It
is this concept of proof that give mathematics its power and ensures that proven theories
are as true today as they were two thousand years ago, and which laid the foundations
for the systematic approach to mathematics of Euclid and those who came after him.

Zeno’s Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCtw5f6XPF4

ACTIVITY 1.1

What is your opinion about “Zeno’s Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise”?