THE 2001 MAA NORTH CENTRAL
SECTION SUMMER SEMINAR

 

BOOKS ON THE HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS.

 

For this summer seminar, it would be very nice if we had a collection of books to consult. I really don't want to bring several boxes of books with me, so if you can find some of the things on the list below in your library, please bring it along. To avoid lots of copies of the same things, let's coordinate what you will bring by sending Ivy Knoshoag at  iknoshaug@bemidjistate.edu . Those items marked by a bold dot are available at Bemidji State University so there is no reason to bring along copies of them. You need not feel restricted to this list. Bring something interesting of a historical nature --- the more variety the merrier. 

The following books deal with some aspect of the history of mathematics, with a heavy concentration on the history of the calculus. Only a few, Baron 1969a, Boyer 1959a, Edwards1979a, Grattan-Guinness 1980, and Toepliz 1963a deal with large portions of the history of calculus. The others concentrate on an individual, a period, or a concept.

This is a bibliography of secondary sources; original works have been excluded even though many collected works contain very valuable introductions. Textbooks and books not dealing mainly with the calculus have, in most instances, been excluded, but it would be nice to have some of them too. An attempt has been made to cover the whole history of the calculus and to deal with the major figures but no attempt has been made to be comprehensive.

Anon.
1989a Historical topics for the mathematics classroom, Reston, Va.: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Bottazzini, Umberto
1986  The higher calculus: a history of real and complex analysis from
Euler to Weierstrass, translated by Warren Van Egmond. New York : Springer-Verlag,  

Bunt, Lucas N. H., Jones, Phillip S., and Bedient, Jack D.
1988a The historical roots of elementary mathematics, Dover Publications, 1988.

Cajori, Florian, 1859-1930.
1919a A History of the conceptions of Limits and Fluxions
in Great Britain from Newton to Woodhouse, Chicago and London: Open Court, viii + 299 pp.

Calinger, Ronald
1976a Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Edwin B. Allen
. Mathematics Memorial, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY., 102 pp.  The best short biography of Leibniz.

Child, James M.
1916a The Geometrical Lectures of Isaac Barrow, Chicago
and London: Open Court.

Child, James M.
1920a The Early Mathematical Manuscripts of Leibniz,
Chicago and London: Open Court.  Valuable for the translations of the manuscripts of Leibniz dating from 1675 when he was in the process of inventing the calculus. One should be very cautious of the commentary for Child is of the opinion that Leibniz stole some of his ideas from Barrow.

Cohen, I. Bernard
1971a Introduction to Newton's 'Principia,' Harvard
University Press. Reprinted in paperback, 1978.

Devlin, Keith J.
1999a  Mathematics: the new golden age, New York: Columbia University Press, c1999.
  A high level expository work that contains a fair amount of history.

Engelsman, Steven B.
1984a Families of Curves and the Origins of Partial
Differentiation, North-Holland Mathematical Studies, # 94.

Gillispie, Charles Coulston
1971a Lazare Carnot, Savant, Princeton University Press.

Goldstine, Herman H.
1977a A History of Numerical Analysis from the 16th
through the 19th Century, Springer. Reviewed by B.N.Parlett, BAMS, (n.s.) 1(1979), 388-390. Parlett's comment about a ``formula'' for $\sigma 1/n$ is wrong. Goldstein (p. 118) misquotes Hofmann who says Leibniz was never able to come to grips with $\sigma 1/{n^2}$.

Gowling, Ronald
1983a Roger Cotes--Natural Philosopher, Cambridge
University Press.

Grabiner, Judith V.
1981a The Origins of Cauchy's Rigorous Calculus, MIT
press.

Grattan-Guinness, Ivor
1970a The Development of the Foundations of analysis for
Euler to Riemann, MIT Press.

Grattan-Guinness, Ivor
1980a From the Calculus to Set Theory, 1630-1910. An
Introductory History, London: Duckworth.  The six chapters, by some of the best contemporary historians of mathematics, provide an excellent and detailed history of the discovery and development of the calculus. Reviews by M.Kline (Isis  72(1981), 661-662) and L.Feigenbaum (Centaurus  28(1985), 67-68) point out that this work is hardly suitable for undergraduates and concentrates on the foundations of the calculus. This has been reprinted by Princeton University Press.

Hankins, Thomas L.
1970a Jean d'Alembert. Science and the Enlightenment,
Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Hairer, E., and Wanner, G.
1996a  Analysis by Its History, Springer. 

Hawkins, Thomas
1970a Lebesgue's Theory of Integration. Its Origins and
Development, University of Wisconsin Press. Reprinted by Chelsea.

Joseph, George Gheverghese 
1991a The crest of the peacock: non-European roots of mathematics,
London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 1991.

Kennedy, Hubert C.
1980a Peano. Life and Works of Giuseppe Peano, Dordrecht:
D. Reidel. Available in paperback.

Loria, Gino
Spezielle algebraische und transscendente ebene Kurven.
Theorie und Geschichte, Leipzig: Teubner. Two volumes.

Manuel, Frank E.
1979a A Portrait of Isaac Newton, New Republic Books,
Washington, D.C. Paperback, 1968, Harvard University Press.

Reiff, R.
1889a Geschichte der unendlichen Reihen, München.
Reprinted 1969, Wiesbaden: Dr. Martin Sändig oHG.

Resnikoff, H. L., and Wells, R. O., Jr.
1984a Mathematics in civilization, Dover Publications.

Rose, Paul Lawrence 
1975a The Italian Renaissance of mathematics: studies on
humanists and mathematicians from Petrarch to Galileo, Genéve: Librairie Droz. A lovely book.

Smith, Sanderson M.
1996a Agnesi to Zeno: over 100 vignettes from the history of math,
Key Curriculum Press, 1996. Useful for topics in the pre-calculus curriculum, but always be cautious of books like this.

Struik, Dirk J. (b. 1894)
1981a The Land of Stevin and Huygens. A Sketch of Science
and Technology in the Dutch Republic during the Golden Century, D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht and Boston. Translation of the Dutch original of 1958.

Swetz, Frank 
1987a Capitalism and arithmetic: the new math of the 15th century,
including the full text of the Treviso arithmetic of 1478, translated by David Eugene Smith, Open Court, 1987.

Toeplitz, Otto
1963a The Calculus. A Genetic Approach, University of
Chicago Press.

Tweedie, Charles
1922a James Stirling. A Sketch of his Life and Works along
with his Scientific Correspondence, Oxford: Clarendon.

van Dalen, D and Monna, A. F.
1972a Sets and Integration. An Outline of the Development,
Wolters-Noordhoff Publishing, Groningen, The Netherlands.

Walker, Evelyn
1932a A Study of the Traité des Indivisibles of Gilles
Persone de Roberval, Teachers College, Columbia University.

Wallis, Joseph Frederick
1938a The Mathematical Work of John Wallis, D.D.,
F.R.S. (1616-1703), London. Reprinted 1981 by Chelsea.

Wallis, Joseph Frederick
1952a The Scientific Work of René Descartes (1596-1650), London: Taylor and Francis.

 


The above works were found by searching the following subjects in various library catalogues:

When you find one book that interests you, click on one of the subject headings and you will find all books so classified. Also you will get a list of `nearby' subject headings.


Alas it will not be possible to have a display of rare mathematical works, so you will have to be satisfied with a virtual book display:

And if you simply must have your own rare book, here is one place to look:

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/alta.mathematica/


Prepared by V. Frederick Rickey, July 2001. Send comments to  fred-rickey@usma.edu .