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After Archimedes, Hellenistic mathematics began to decline. There were a few minor stars yet to come, but the golden age of geometry was over. Proclus (410–485), author of Commentary on the First Book of Euclid, was one of the last important players in Hellenistic geometry. He was a competent geometer, but more importantly, he was a superb ...
1733 – Giovanni Gerolamo Saccheri studies what geometry would be like if Euclid's fifth postulate were false, 1796 – Carl Friedrich Gauss proves that the regular 17-gon can be constructed using only a compass and straightedge; 1797 – Caspar Wessel associates vectors with complex numbers and studies complex number operations in geometrical ...
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 ...
Geometry (from Ancient Greek γεωμετρία (geōmetría) 'land measurement'; from γῆ (gê) 'earth, land' and μέτρον (métron) 'a measure') [1] is a branch of mathematics concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. [2]
Babylonian mathematics were written using a sexagesimal (base-60) numeral system. [21] From this derives the modern-day usage of 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and 360 (60 × 6) degrees in a circle, as well as the use of seconds and minutes of arc to denote fractions of a degree.
There are many areas of mathematics, which include number theory (the study of numbers), algebra (the study of formulas and related structures), geometry (the study of shapes and spaces that contain them), analysis (the study of continuous changes), and set theory (presently used as a foundation for all mathematics).
An interesting feature of ancient Egyptian mathematics is the use of unit fractions. [7] The Egyptians used some special notation for fractions such as 1 / 2 , 1 / 3 and 2 / 3 and in some texts for 3 / 4 , but other fractions were all written as unit fractions of the form 1 / n or sums of such unit ...
The Shulba Sutras from the Vedic period of Indian mathematics, for instance, contains geometric instructions on how to physically construct a (quality) fire-altar by using a taut rope as a straightedge. These altars could have various shapes but for theological reasons, they were all required to have the same area.