Books

Ancient Mathematics
Serafina Cuomo, Routledge
This book covers Fifth Century BC to AD Sixth Century , including mathematics and politics in Ancient Greece, Graeco-Roman mathematics, and mathematics and Christianity. An account of both ‘high-brow’ advanced mathematics and of ‘lower’ more basic mathematics, e.g. counting and measuring.

A Concise History of Mathematics
Dirk J. Struik, Dover paperback
This book does what it says in the title. Goes from early beginnings up to modern day but in c.220 pages. Useful and reliable, if a little dated. Good references.

A History of Mathematics: An Introduction
Victor J. Katz, Addison Wesley
A general history of mathematics – from early beginnings up to modern day. Quite a weighty tome, with over 870 pages, but very readable and reliable. Aimed at undergraduate audience.

Fermat’s Last Theorem
Simon Singh, Fourth Estate
A very accessible and engagingly written history of Fermat’s Last Theorem deriving from the award-winning Horizon programme.

Finding Moonshine
Marcus du Sautoy, Fourth Estate
Symmetry

Ideas of Space
Jeremy J. Gray, Oxford University Press
A lively account of the history of the development of Euclidean, non-Euclidean and Relativistic models of the shape of the universe.

Isaac Newton
James Gleik, Harper Perennial
A very readable, fresh and concise biography of Newton

Mathematics in ancient Iraq: a social historyEleanor Robson, Princeton University Press

The Hilbert Challenge
Jeremy J. Gray, Oxford University Press
A very accessible account of the Hilbert problems – what they were, why they were proposed and who solved them (c.300 pages).

The Mathematics of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, and Islam: A Sourcebook
Edited by Victor J. Katz,Princeton University Press
Major sourcebook in English of non-Western mathematics. Sources complemented by excellent introductory essays by the leading scholars in their fields (authors include Imhausen, Robson and Dauben who appear in the Story of Maths). Possibly a little too academic but there is nothing else reliable on the market.

The Music of the Primes
Marcus du Sautoy, Harper Collins
On the Riemann Hypothesis.

The Poincaré Conjecture
Donal O’Shea, Penguin
A well-told and lively account of the history of the Poincaré Conjecture.

The Princeton Companion to Mathematics
Edited by Timothy Gowers, June Barrow-Green and Imre Leader, Princeton University Press
More than 200 articles illustrating modern pure mathematics, organised thematically and written by many of the world’s leading mathematicians, explaining the major ideas and branches of mathematics in a clear accessible style. [to appear in 2008]

Weblinks:

Digital Mathematics Archive
This contains links to 2447 digitized books and to 229 digitized journals, including collected works of many famous mathematicians, for example, Poincaré, Riemann. Strong on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Earliest Known Uses of Some of the Words of Mathematics
This website page shows the first uses of various words in mathematics

Earliest Uses of Various Mathematical Symbols
This page show the first uses of various symbols in mathematics.

Euler Archive
A resource for Euler’s original works and modern Euler scholarship. It provides access to original publications, and references to available translations and current research.

Gresham College Lectures
A collection of Mathematics lectures presented at Gresham College by Robin Wilson, Professor of Mathematics at the Open University.

The Archimedes Palimpsest
A source of information about the history and restoration of the Archimedes Palimpsest, a tenth century manuscript, the unique source for two of Archimedes Treatises, The Method and Stomachion, and the Greek text of On Floating Bodies. It also contains information about Archimedes’ life and work.

The Galileo Project
A source of information about the life and work of Galileo which also contains information about Galileo’s scientific contemporaries (e.g. Kepler and Tycho Brahe) and the scientific institutions of his time.

The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive
This is the largest general history of mathematics website. Its largest component is its biographies of mathematicians which also contain portraits and references to source material. The site also has several articles on historical topics.

Content last updated: 09/04/2008