The course starts with the development of verbal and written number systems, and proceeds to trace the expansion of some of the most significant mathematical concepts through South Asia's cultural and intellectual history up to the middle of the second millennium of our era. Readings of original sources in English translation range from Babylonian mathematical tablets through Euclid and Archimedes, Oresme, Galileo, Leibniz and Newton, to Cauchy, Riemann and Robinson.
Readings consist primarily of excerpts from original sources in English translation.
As a TA, I assisted the professor in developing and teaching a survey course on the history of mathematical thought from antiquity to the twentieth century. The development of number systems, the emergence of algebra and geometry, the mathematization of natural philosophy, non-Euclidean geometries, and the problems of historiography in history of mathematics were some of the major themes of the course. As an instructor in the Brown Summer Science Adventure and Brown Society of Junior Scientists programs, I developed learning activities materials for junior high and high school students, and used them in teaching classes on the history of astronomy and mathematics and its traces in everyday life. This page was last updated 3 September 1999.