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It was the Pythagoreans who coined the term "mathematics", and with whom the study of mathematics for its own sake begins. The Pythagoreans are credited with the first proof of the Pythagorean theorem, [44] though the statement of the theorem has a long history, and with the proof of the existence of irrational numbers.
The number of known mathematicians grew when Pythagoras of Samos (c. 582 – c. 507 BC) established the Pythagorean school, whose doctrine it was that mathematics ruled the universe and whose motto was "All is number". [2] It was the Pythagoreans who coined the term "mathematics", and with whom the study of mathematics for its own sake begins.
Mathematics is essential in the natural sciences, engineering, medicine, finance, computer science, and the social sciences. Although mathematics is extensively used for modeling phenomena, the fundamental truths of mathematics are independent of any scientific experimentation.
[8] [9] Islamic mathematics, in turn, developed and expanded the mathematics known to these civilizations. [10] Contemporaneous with but independent of these traditions were the mathematics developed by the Maya civilization of Mexico and Central America, where the concept of zero was given a standard symbol in Maya numerals.
The study of mathematics as a subject in its own right began in the 6th century BC with the Pythagoreans, who coined the term "mathematics" from the ancient Greek mathema (μάθημα), meaning "subject of instruction". [15] Plato's influence was especially strong in mathematics and the sciences.
The term was coined in 1920 by 9-year-old Milton Sirotta (1911–1981), nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner. [1] He may have been inspired by the contemporary comic strip character Barney Google. [2] Kasner popularized the concept in his 1940 book Mathematics and the Imagination. [3]
This is a timeline of pure and applied mathematics history.It is divided here into three stages, corresponding to stages in the development of mathematical notation: a "rhetorical" stage in which calculations are described purely by words, a "syncopated" stage in which quantities and common algebraic operations are beginning to be represented by symbolic abbreviations, and finally a "symbolic ...
Perhaps one of the most significant advances made by Arabic mathematics began at this time with the work of al-Khwarizmi, namely the beginnings of algebra. It is important to understand just how significant this new idea was. It was a revolutionary move away from the Greek concept of mathematics which was essentially geometry.