Fred Rickey's History of Mathematics Page

Steven Rockey, Mathematics Librarian at Cornell, has prepared a list of sites that digitalize mathematics works.

Here is a rather nice site with pictures of the graves of mathematicians.

By popular demand I have posted my Calendar of Mathematical Dates for use in your classroom.

There are two groups in the US which meet regularly and read original sources. ORESME meets in the Cincinnatti area and ARITHMOS meets at Western Connecticut State Universtity. Full details are available on their web sites. Here is some additional information: Both groups have read some of the works of Georg Cantor (here are some works by and about him ). ARITHMOS has discussed John Wallis and also had a meeting about Twentieth Century Logic where they read papers by Church, Turing (Post's critique), and Post. Of necessity, these groups are small, but if you have a serious interest in history you ought to think of starting your own.

The February 2005 meeting deals with Euler's Introductio. I have written a A Reader's Guide to Euler's Introductio. Here is a list of errata in Blanton's translation of Euler's Introductio.

Dominic Klyve and Lee Stemkoski, graduate students at Dartmouth, have a page listing all of Euler's publications, and copies of some of them.

Links to History of Mathematics on the web.

• The Mathematics Curriculum at West Point in the Nineteenth Century, a talk at Making History: West Point at 200 Years. Joint work with Amy Shell. 

• The 2001 MAA North Central Section Summer Seminar on the History of Mathematics was presented by me at Bemidji State University in Bemidji, MN. The details of the program give abstracts of the talks and suggested readings.  

• At West Point on June 21-24, 2001 there was a conference on the History of Undergraduate Mathematics in America. Click HUMA for details.
• Historia Mathematica Abstracts.
• A tour of the USMA library for those interested in the History of Mathematics.
• Information about a minicourse on teaching history of mathematics.
• Information about the history of mathematics course that I taught at Bowling Green.
• Information about History of Mathematics courses at various schools that are on the web. 
• Papers about the teaching of history of mathematics. 
• History of Mathematics resources on the web. 

One of my favorite things to do is to visit rare books rooms. Here are details on a few of my favorites:

• Rare Books at West Point. For classes of Dr Shell-Gellash and Dr Rickey.
• Rare Books in the Classroom. 
• Some rare books in the library at West Point.
• Some items the department at West Point.
• Rare Math Books at the University of Michigan,
• Rare books at the Smithsonian. 
• Rare books at American University. 
• Rare books at West Point for students in Analysis I.
• NSF Workshop at West Point, 2010 June 15.

Portraits of Mathematicians:

I am often asked where I get the overheads that I use in talks. This is a hard question to answer, for many of them come from the original texts. There are not too many collections of photographs that are (moderately) easy to access, but here are a couple:

• Acta Mathematica published a Table Générale des Tomes 1-35 rédigée par Marcel Riesz. This index volume contains biographical information on everyone who has published in the journal, a list of their publications in the journal, and a picture. There are too many names to list here. 
• The American Journal of Mathematics published photographs of selected mathematicians as frontispieces to volumes 10 (1887) to 37 (1915), with the exception of 1900 when editor Craig died (but there are two in 1901). Here they are in order of appearance: J. J. Sylvester, Ch. Hermite, Poincare, Cayley, Felix Klein, Halphen, S. Lie, Emile Picard, Paul Appell, Fuchs, Darbux. S. Newcomb, [none in 1900], Mittag-Leffler and Geo. Salmon [separate photographs in 1901], Benjamin Peirce, Luigi Cremona, [Max] Noether, G. W. Hill, Georg Cantor, David Hilbert, Paul Jordan, George Boole, A. R. Forsyth, U. Dini, Colin Maclaurin, C. Jordan, W. Stahl, and John Napier. The journal is available on JSTOR. 

Questions I have:

1. Do you know anyplace that has any glass stereopticon slides? I have some produced by L. C. Karpinski and others produced under the direction of  David Eugene Smith.

I am preparing a volume of Historical Notes for Calculus Teachers.

The early life of Kenneth O. May and a bibliography of his publications.

Cardano on the cubic: 1, 2, 3. Pollin.

The impact of ballistics on mathematics. A work just started.

Napoléon inconnu (1895): Title and Table of Contents, Premier cahier sur l'artillerie, principes d'artillerie.