Prepared by Victor Katz.
Otto Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951)
B. L. van der Waerden, Science Awakening I (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961)
B. L. van der Waerden, Geometry and Algebra in Ancient Civilizations (New York: Springer, 1983)
Jens Høyrup, Lengths, Widths, Surfaces: A Portrait of Old Babylonian Algebra and Its Kin (New York: Springer, 2002)
Richard J. Gillings, Mathematics in the Time of the Pharaohs (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1972)
Li Yan and Du Shiran, Chinese Mathematics: A Concise History, translated by John N. Crossley and Anthony W. C. Lun (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987)
Jean-Claude Martzloff, A History of Chinese Mathematics, translated by Stephen S. Wilson (Berline: Springer, 1997)
Shen Kangshen, John S. Crossley and Anthony W.-C. Lun, The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art: Companion and Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)
B. Datta and A. N. Singh, History of Hindu Mathematics (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1961) (reprint of 1935-38 original)
Denise Schmandt-Besserat, Before Writing: From Counting to Cuneiform (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992)
Thomas Heath, A History of Greek Mathematics (New York: Dover, 1981) (reprint of 1921 original)
Wilbur Knorr, The Evolution of the Euclidean Elements (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1975)
Wilbur Knorr, The Ancient Tradition of Geometric Problems (New York: Dover, 1993) (reprint of 1986 original)
D. H. Fowler, The Mathematics of Plato's Academy: A New Reconstruction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987, 1999)
J. Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968)
E. J. Dijksterhuis, Archimedes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987)
S. Cuomo, Ancient Mathematics (London: Routledge, 2001). Reviewed by Scott Carson in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review.
Benno Artmann, Euclid: The Creation of Mathematics (New York: Springer, 1999)
Michael N. Fried and Sabetai Unguru, Apollonius of Perga’s Conica: Text, Context, Subtext (Leiden, Brill, 2001)
Reviel Netz, The Shaping of Deduction in Greek Mathematics: A Study in Cognitive History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Reviewed by Daryn Lehoux in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review.
Reviel Netz, The Transformation of Ma, 520-525thematics in the Early Mediterranean World: From Problems to Equations (Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. 198. ISBN 0-521-82996-8. $70.00). Reviewed by Anne Mahoney in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review.
Reviel Netz, The Works of Archimedes: Translated into English, together with Eutocius' Commentaries, with Commentary, and Critical Edition of the Diagrams. Vol. 1: The Two Books On the Sphere and the Cylinder. (Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. x, 375. ISBN 0-521-66160-9. $125.00). Reviewed by Eleanor Dickey in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review. Also reviewed by Alexander Jones in the Notices of the AMS, June 2005, 520-525.
Ulrich Libbrecht, Chinese Mathematics in the Thirteenth Century: The Shu-shu chiu-chang of Ch'in Chiu-shao (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1973)
J. Lennart Berggren, Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam (New York: Springer, 1986)
George Gheverghese Joseph, The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of Mathematics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000)
Edward Grant and John E. Murdoch, eds., Mathematics and Its Applications to Science and Natural Philosophy in the Middle Ages: Essays in honor of Marshall Clagett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)
David E. Lindberg, ed., Science in the Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978)
Roshdi Rashed, The Development of Arabic Mathematics: Between Arithmetic and Algebra, translated by A. F. W. Armstrong (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994)
B. L. van der Waerden, A History of Algebra from al-Khwarizmi to Emmy Noether (New York: Springer, 1985)
Lubos Novy, Origins of Modern Algebra (Prague: Academia Publishing House, 1973)
Hans Wussing, The Genesis of the Abstract Group Concept (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984)
André Weil, Number Theory: An Approach through History from Hammurapi to Legendre (Boston: Birkhäuser, 1984)
Leo Corry, Modern Algebra and the Rise of Mathematical Structures (Boston: Birkhäuser, 1996)
Helena M. Pycior, Symbols, Impossible Numbers, and Geometric Entanglements: British Algebra Through the Commentaries on Newton’s Universal Arithmetick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)
Carl Boyer, History of Analytic Geometry (New York: Scripta Mathematica, 1956)
Jeremy Gray, Ideas of Space: Euclidean, Non-Euclidean and Relativistic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989)
Boris Rosenfeld, A History of Non-Euclidean Geometry: Evolution of the Concept of a Geometric Space, trans. by Abe Shenitzer (New York: Springer, 1988)
Michael J. Crowe, A History of Vector Analysis (New York: Dover, 1985)
Carl Boyer, The History of the Calculus and its Conceptual Development (New York: Dover, 1959)
Margaret E. Baron, The Origins of the Infinitesimal Calculus (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1969)
C. H. Edwards, The Historical Development of the Calculus (New York: Springer, 1979)
Ivor Grattan-Guinness, ed. From the Calculus to Set Theory, 1630- 1910: An Introductory History (London: Duckworth, 1980)
Umberto Bottazzini, The Higher Calculus: A History of Real and Complex analysis from Euler to Weierstrass (New York: Springer, 1986)
Ivor Grattan-Guinness, The Development of the Foundations of Mathematical Analysis from Euler to Riemann (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1970)
Judith V. Grabiner, The Origins of Cauchy's Rigorous Calculus (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981)
Niccolò Guicciardini, Reading the Principia: The Debate on Newton’s Mathematical Methods for Natural Philosophy from 1687 to 1736 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)
Gert Schubring, Conflicts Between Generalization, Rigor, and Intuition: Number Concepts Underlying the Development of Analysis in 17th-19th Century France and Germany (New York: Springer, 2005). Reviewed by Warren Johnson, MAA OnLine.
F. N. David, Games, Gods, and Gambling (New York: Hafner, 1962)
Ian Hacking, The Emergence of Probability (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975)
Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)
Stephen M. Stigler, The History of Statistics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986)
Lorraine Daston, Classical Probability in the Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988)
Theodore M. Porter, The Rise of Statistical Thinking (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986)
Gerd Gigerenzer et al, The Empire of Chance: How Probability Changed Science and Everyday Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)
Lorenz Krüger, Lorraine J. Daston, and Michael Heidelberger, eds., The Probabilistic Revolution (2 volumes) (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987)
Anders Hald, A History of Probability and Statistics and Their Applications before 1750 (New York: Wiley, 1990)
Anders Hald, A History of Mathematical Statistics from 1750 to 1930 (New York: Wiley, 1998)
Gregory H. Moore, Zermelo's Axiom of Choice: Its Origins, Development, and Influence (New York: Springer, 1982)
Alejandro R. Garciadiego, Bertrand Russell and the Origins of the Set-Theoretic "Paradoxes" (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1992)
I. Grattan-Guinness, The Search for Mathematical Roots, 1870-1940: Logics, Set Theories and the Foundations of Mathematics from Cantor Through Russell to Gödel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), Reviewed by Marvin Schaefer, MAA OnLine.
Claudia Zaslavsky, Africa Counts: Number and Pattern in African Culture, 3rd edition (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1999)
Marcia Ascher, Ethnomathematics: A Multicultural View of Mathematical Ideas (Pacific Grove, Ca.: Brooks/Cole, 1991)
Marcia Ascher, Mathematics Elsewhere: An Exploration of Ideas Across Cultures (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). Reviewed by Charles Ashbacher, MAA OnLine.
Helaine Selin, ed., Mathematics Across Cultures: The History of Non-Western Mathematics (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2000) . Briefly noted by Fernando Q. Gouvêa, MAA OnLine.
Reviews of many books dealing with the history of mathematics can be found at MAA OnLine.
Return to the minicourse home page.
If you have comments, send email to V. Frederick Rickey at
fred-rickey@usma.edu .
Revision posted 7 January 2003. Slightly revised by VFR, December 2005.