Swaziland, southern Africa

The Ishango, living on the shores of what is now known as Lake Edward on the borders of modern-day Uganda and Zaire, live by catching fish and hunting. The Ishango bone is marked with notches. The notches are grouped in 4 rows. In two rows they sum to 60. One row contains the prime numbers up to 20.

Ishango

Ishango, central Africa

-35000
The bone of a baboon found in a cave in the Lebembo mountains on the borders of Swaziland and South Africa has 29 clear notches. Similar to "calendar sticks" found in Namibia and dated much later. Czechoslovakia, 30,000 bc the bone of a wolf found with 57 deeply cut notches, grouped in fives. Probably the record of "kills" by a hunter who could count in fives.

-20000
What was the Ishango bone used for? A game? A calendar recording the phases of the moon? Religious festivals based on the seasons?

Prime numbers as written over 20,000 years ago

Lebembo, Swaziland

Ancient Egypt

BABYLON between the Euphrates and Tigris. The start of a civilisation which will last 3,000 years and leave its mark on mathematics. This is the land of Noah's Arc and Abraham, the founding father of three world religions.
-3300 -3200

-3500

-3500

-3400
Herodotus: "The Egyptian people and culture come from the lands of the 'long-lived Ethiopians' the vast tract of inner Africa ."

-3400

-3300

-3200

Egypt

Egyptian hieroglyphics recorded numbers with pictures. 1 was drawn as a short piece of rope. A 10 was a longer piece of rope. 100 was a coil of rope. 1000 looked like a lotus flower. 10,000 was represented by a crooked finger. 100,000 looked like a tadpole. A man with arms outstretched, as if saying "Wow!", was 1,000,000. The rising sun as 10 million. Ancient Egypt was famous for its "ropestretchers" who surveyed the land.

pifactory.net

Pharoah Narmer captured 120,000 prisoners, 400,000 oxen and 1,422,000 goats. Exactly.

Indus Valley, India

The Indus Valley, west India, Pakistan

-3100 -3000 -2900

-3100
Babylon, the land between the Euphrates and the Tigris

The Abacus is developed in China and the Middle East

-3000

-2900

-2800
For the ancient Babylonians the number 60 was magic. Today we count in tens... But the Babylonians counted in 60s. It was great. They never had any headaches with fractions! We still use some Babylonian numbers today. Look at your watch.

60!
The early Babylonians wrote their numbers in clay using sticks with sharpened points. Their numbers were made up of just two symbols, T and < shapes , pressed into the clay. We call it cuneiform writing.

-2800

For 1,500 years a highly civilised people lived in the Indus Valley, now in India and Pakistan. Even to this day the code of their sophisticated writing, the Indus script, has not been cracked. The maths of the Indus Valley is the foundation for the maths of India.
-2700 -2600 -2500 -2400

-2700

Egyptian calendars

-2600

-2500
Babylon at this time is a number of small city-states. The Babylonians use their clay tablets and numbers to develop multiplication and division tables. Their base number is 60. We call it a sexagesimal system. So, the important times tables were for the numbers 2 to 20 and 30, 40 and 50. With these the Babylonians could carry out all possible multiplications. Today our base number is 10, the decimal system. Our important times tables are 2 to 10.

-2400
Fractions were easy! 60 can be divided by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 15, 20 and 30. So, 1/2 is written as 30. Until the arrival of decimal fractions, 1/2 is 0.5, the Babylonian way of working with fractions stayed the best.

The Indus Valley developed intricate brickwork patterns, and uniform decimal weights and measures
-2200

The Indus Valley civilisation lasts another 500 years before disappearing
-2100 -2000

-2300

-2300

-2200
Hey!... These guys got this Pythagoras stuff before me!

-2100

Babylon quadratic equations solved

-2000

A clay tablet of Babylonian cuneiform writing.

The Babylonians knew about right-angled triangles and similar triangles. This diagram appeared on a clay tablet with a proof that showed the Babylonians knew the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the opposite two sides. Other tablets listed what we now call Pythagorean triples, the lengths of the sides of right-angled triangles.

pi is 4(8/9)2 Egyptians are using symbols, hieratic numerals, by now. They do multiplication and division by repeatedly multiplying or dividing by 2. In their calculations for instance, 23 is 2 0 + 21 + 22 + 24. They break fractions into complicated lists of unit fractions, for instance, 2/5 = 1/3 + 1/15 and 2/47 = 1/30 + 1/141 + 1/470.
-1800 -1700

Egyptian fractions in the Eye of Horus

-1900

-1900

-1800

-1700

-1600

Babylon is united and the city on the banks of the Euphrates becomes the prosperous centre of a highly cultured empire. The most famous king of the time was King Hammurabi.

We Babylonians spend the next 600 years gazing at the stars and doing the early stuff on astronomy

The Babylonians wrote lots of tables in clay - tables of multiplications, reciprocals, squares and cubes as well as square and cube roots. They even had tables for n3 + n2

-1600

The Vedic people

Vedic people enter India from what is now Iran. Over the next 1000 years they develop Vedic maths based on rules called Sulbasutras written for building sacrificial altars
-1500 -1400 -1300 -1200

-1500

-1400

China decimal numbers but with no zero

-1300

-1200

Rameses II divided the land into lots and gave a square piece of equal size, from the produce of which he exacted an annual tax. The king would send inspectors to measure the extent of the loss Perhaps this was the way in which geometry was invented, and passed afterwards into Greece. Heroditus

Plato, Athens, 427BC founder of The Academy

Egypt, 1650BC - Rhind papyrus contains tables of fractions and about 80 maths problems.

Hey! That's my theorem!

Hi, I'm Sri Bharati Krsna Tirthaji and I rediscovered Vedic maths in ancient Sanskrit texts
-1100

India, 800BC Baudhayana writes one of the first sulbasutras all the maths is written in words and verses

Manava, 750BC more sulbasutras pi = 25/8

India, 600BC Apastamba writes a remarkable sulbasutra

-1100

China counting boards used for calculation

'The rope which is stretched across the diagonal of a square produces an area double the size of the original square'
-1000

-1000

-900

Chapter1, verse 61 states: 2=577/408 or, 1.41422

Zero Babyloni use three hooks to show the empty sp in their number system

-900

-800

The School of Athens - by Raphael

427BC e Academy Pythagoras,

Euclid, Alexandria, 325BC - author of The Elements

-800

ble

Zero - the Babylonians use three hooks to show the empty space in their number system
-700

I'm Hippocrates I tried to construct a square with the same area of a circle. I failed, but discovered other stuff.

India Panini, 520BC, works on Sanskrit grammar and opens up discussion on science, philosophy and maths.
-600

China
China decimal notation with symbols for 1 to 9, then 10, 100, 1000 10000...
-500

Zero - the Babylonians use two wedge symbols to show where we would now put the zero in their numbers.

-700

China counting rods introduced zero was a space. Adding, subtraction, multiplication and division as done now

-600

-500

Greeks begin to use numerals

-400

-400

Autolycus studies spheres

Hi, I'm Pythagoras, born 569BC, and I studied in Egypt and Babylon. Me and my mates set up a secretive and mysterious school in Croton we had no possessions, were vegetarian and we called ourselves mathematikoi and studied arithmetic, music, geometry, astronomy. And we swore an oath of secrecy.

Hi, I'm Thales, born 624BC, the first of the great Greek mathematicians. I insisted on proof. And I brought Babylonian maths to Greece and used geometry to calculate the height of the pyramids and the distance of ships from the shore.

Hi, I'm Zeno of Elea, born in what is now southern Italy. I thought up paradoxes. For instance try to sum 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + backwards starting at the end!

Hippasus proved Pythagoras wrong on one point and got thrown in the sea!

Euclid of Alexandria, 325BC - Maths was almost all about geometry. Euclid wrote it all down in 13 books called The Elements.Euclid built up the maths, with each bit helping to prove the next bit.

Elements

Buddhism Buddhist pilgrims carry Indian maths across Asia

China, 290BC the classic Chou pei suan ching is written

-300 -200

Hi, I'm Eratosthenes. I was born in 276BC in Cyrene, in what is now Libya in north Africa. My nickname was Beta, because I was very, very good at lots of stuff but never the best in anything. I measured the distance between the earth and moon, and the earth and the sun. I also measured the circumference of the earth. And I was pretty close! I also worked out how to calculate prime numbers with my sieve... which is still used in classrooms more than 2000 years later.
-100 0

Autolycus studies spheres

-300

Hi, I'm Aristotle. I, and my followers gave maths logic All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. So Socrates must be mortal!

Hi, I'm Archimedes. I estimated there were the equivalent of 1063 grains of sand in the universe. Give or take a couple, and not far out. I talked of "myriads" and was trying to fathom the scale of numbers.

-200

Aristarchus says the earth orbits the sun

-100
Zero - Greek astronomers use the 0 symbol to represent the idea of nothing. It comes from the impression left in sand by counters.

Chinese use negative numbers

0
China

China

Eureka!
Archimedes made the first theoretical attempt to calculate pi the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle. He got 3.1418

I'm Zeno of Sidon born in Lebanon in 150BC. I criticised Euclid's ideas but no one took any notice for ages. But I was right!

100

200

300

China Pythagoras used for surveying and astronomy some evidence says even earlier than Pythagoras

100

Chang Hong puts pi at 3.1622

200
Hi, I'm Ptolemy I observed the sun, moon and planets and made astronomy into a mathematical science

300
Porphyry biographer of Pythagoras

Tsu Ch'ung Chi puts pi at 3.141592920

400

Ptolemy puts pi at 3.14166

Hi, I'm Heron of Alexandria. I wrote about the maths of things like air, steam and pressure. I also described how to make giant catapults and engines of war and puppets!

Liu Hui in China approximates pi to 3.141014 using a polygon with 192 sides.
Mayans use a place value system and a base of 20

The first 3x3 magic square was revealed to the Emperor Yu the Great on the back of a turtle in the Lo Shu river. The numbers in any direction add up to the magic number 15.

India

Diaphantus of Alexandria, the father of algebra, born. He worked on equations such as ax2 + bx = c

Hi, Im Nicomarchus I wrote the first book to treat arithmetic separate from geometry

Hypatia... The first woman mathematician and philosopher to be widely recognised. Taught at Alexandria Museum, Egypt, and wrote on Euclid and geometry and Diaphantus and his equations. A pagan and follower of Plato's ideas, her flesh was scraped from her bones by militant Christians.

400

I'm Heng and I was born in China in 78 among other things I invented the first machine for measuring earthquakes a ball fell out of a dragon's mouth into a frog's

China - The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art. Common fractions, highest common denominators, lowest common multiples, areas, proportions, square and cube roots, volumes, pyramids, cylinders, cones, simultaneous linear equations, negative numbers, rightangled triangles.

India - the classic era 400 to 1500

Aryabhatiya, 476 -- arithmetic, algebra, plane geometry, trigonometry including a table of sines and the first introduction of the concept of cosine, and spherical trigonometry. Invents number system using alphabetical notation giving numbers to 10^18. Uses zero and place value system. Of all the ancients Aryabhatia has the most accurate estimate of the value for pi of 3.14159265. He estimated the circumference of the earth at 62832 miles. He said the apparent rotation of the heavens was due to axial rotation of the earth... such a shocking idea that his supporters changed his text to hide his stupidity! He correctly explained the eclipses of sun and moon, identified that the moon shines by reflecting the light of the sun, and identified the earth and the planets have elliptical orbits around the sun. He put the length of the year at 365 days 6 hours and 12 minutes and 30 seconds. Less than 25 minutes too much!
500 600 700 800

500
Zu Chongzhi in China approximates pi to 3.1415926 and recommends the fraction 355/113 as a close approximation and 22/7 for rough.

600
China
Indian astronomer Levensita translates Indian maths into Chinese angle measurement using 360 degrees, table of sines and explains Hindu decimal numerals. Zero - Indian mathematicians are the first to use 0 as a proper number, not just a place holder. Brahmagupta writes that the sum of 0 and a negative number is a negative, and the sum of 0 and a positive number is a positive. A number multiplied by 0 is 0.

700
Bhaskara identifies infinity

800
Mahavira uses 9 numerals

Abu Kamil

Zero - Indian mathematician Mahavira tackles division by 0 and writes "a number remains unchanged when divided by zero." The Indian mathematicians call zero Kha.

Arabia
The maths of today is far closer to the developments made by the Islamic and Arabic mathematicians than the maths of the ancient Greeks. Many of the ideas previously attributed to the European mathematicians of the 16th to 18th centuries, are now known to have been developed by the Arabic mathematicians centuries earlier.

Bhaskara, born in what is now know as Gujarat, 600 AD. Gives formula to estimate the trigonometic sine function which has a maximum error of less than 1%. The first recorded mathematician to examine quadrilaterals where all four sides are unequal and none of the opposite sides are parallel. Bhaskara also wrote on linear equations,quadratic and cubic equations and equations with more than one unknown.

970 - Abu'l Wafa invents th

Sridhara, born 870 Bengal. One of first to describe how to solve quadratic equations. Like most Indian maths it was all written in verse!

Hi, I'm al-Biruni. I was born in 973 in what is now Uzbekistan. I did so much maths and astronomy it is hard to make a list. I lived and studied in India for a while and translated Sanskrit books on maths, astronomy, medicine, geography, grammar...
1000

Abu Kamil writes on algebra

900

Jia Xian finds higher degree roots

1000

Kerala, India Taylor series developed 300 years before Taylor

Zero -Ibn Ezra writes The Book of Number, bringing the Indian number system and decimal fractions with place values written from left to right to the attention of European scholars. He uses the symbol 0, which he calls "galgal" meaning wheel or circle.
1100

Hi, I'm Omar Khayyam. I wrote books on algebra and music. I worked out the length of the year was 365.24219858156 days!
1200

900

1100

Jabir ibn Aflah books will be translated into latin

Li Yeh uses negative numbers

1200

al-jabr Algebra!

Zero - Islamic mathematician alSamawal writes, 'if we subtract a positive number from zero the same negative number remains. "

The origins of the Zero -Ch'in Chiu-Shao in China Yoruba people of repeats Indian number ideas and south-west Nigeria are lost in the mists of time. The Yoruba Customs link with the Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi ancient Egyptians. 825 writes Hisab al-jabr w'a'-muqabala. Recent

Beginnings of Arabic algebra, pains to link back to Babylonian and Greek but particularly Indian numeral system. Introduces Indian numerals to the west.

history dates from the early centuries of the second millenium. Numbers are based on 20 with an emphasis on subtraction. So, 19, ookandinlogun, is 20 minus 5.

'l Wafa invents the wall quadrant and the tangent function

The Incas

The Incas
1300 1400

Early use of the +, symbols by Widman. + is a short form of the latin et, meaning 'and'

Copernicus suggests the earth circles the sun and suffers the wrath of the Catholic church

1500

ed into latin

1300

1400
al-Kashi finds pi to 14 places At its height during the last decades of the 15th century, the Inca empire covered much of today's Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador and Argentina. It lacked the wheel, beasts of burden and a written language. But it recorded population and statistical records on Quipus, balls of string and knots. Using relay runners a quipu could be moved some 300 miles in 24 hours. A quipu was made using different types and colours of cord and knots. According to position the knots signified units, tens... up to hundreds of thousands.

1500

Recorde introduces the = sign

Priticus uses the word trigonometry for the first time

1600

Who discovered calculus first Newton or Liebnitz? Bhaskaracharya in India in 1100s

Van Ceulen finds pi to 35 places

The Aztec Sun Stone is a calendar based on astronomy and maths. Pictographs indicate days, months and suns (cosmic cycles). The stone is 3.6 m in diameter and weighs about 24 metric tons. It took 52 years to complete, from 14271479. This calendar is 103 years older than the Gregorian calendar which is used worldwide today.

1600

Batchet writes a book of puzzles

Fibonacci describes the nine Indian number symbols and 0.

I'm Nicole d'Oresme, France, and I invented coordinate geometry

Maths becomes compulsory for a degree at the University of Paris

The Aztecs

George Wash "The investig mathematica truths accus the mind to m and correctn reasoning

1700

1800

1900

Batchet writes a book of puzzles

1700

Machin finds pi to 100 places

1800

Rutherford finds pi to 440 places

1900
I'm Sofia Kovalevskaya, single mother, nurse to the wounded of the Paris Commune, poet and first woman professor of maths

2000

2000

Hi, we're the brilliant but argumentative Bernoullis, Johann, Daniel and Jacob. We helped Liebniz with calculus but we jealously mocked each other's achievements.

I'm George Boole, born in Lincoln in 1815. I applied algebra to human reasoning. Boolean algebra is the basis of modern computer programming.
I'm Charles Babbage, born in 1791 in London. I designed the first computer and changed maths forever

I'm GH Hardy. England's top mathematician in the early 1900s. Collaborated with Ramanujan and wrote A Mathematician's Apology I'm Srinivasa Ramanujan. I was a rail clerk in Madras. I had little formal education. I invented my own algebra. And many now say I was one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. I seemed to conjure up the most complex theorems, writing little down.

one

onths

m in ghs ons.

I'm Leonhard Euler, born in Basel in Switzerland 1707. I was the first to use the symbol for pi, I found e, the base for natural logarithms and was the most prolific writer of maths of all time.

I'm Ada Byron Lovelace. I explained how computer programmes could work before computers were made.

I'm Andrew Wiles and I proved Fermat's last theorem which had baffled mathematicians for more than 300 years

I'm Pierre de Fermat I enjoyed setting maths puzzles

Fractals discovered by Mandelbrot

I'm Marjorie Lee Browne, the first black woman in the USA to get a PhD I'm Rear Admiral Grace Hopper. I discovered the first computer bug and the first woman to be awarded the UK's and USA's highest technology awards.

George Washington: "The investigation of mathematical truths accustoms the mind to method and correctness in reasoning "

I'm Benjamin Banneker, son of a slave and author of astronomical almanacs.

I'm the secretive Carl Gauss I drew a 17-gon using only ruler and compasses, plus a lot more...

1999 Kanada Takashi finds pi to 206158430000 places!

Hi, I'm and I went to Parkrose High School in 2005

The next 30,000 years the story continues...

2100

2100
Mathematics the language of all people through all time
Produced by Mr Whitfield, Southgate School, January 2003. Main sources: The Crest of the Peacock, by Georges Gheverghese Joseph. The MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive @ http://turnbull.dcs.stand.ac.uk/~history/ Plus web sites across the world. For links see: pifactory.net Historical interpretation is down to Mr Whitfield. PS Apologies to Einstein, Russell, Descartes, Turing, Timaeus, Fourier, Nobel, Pascal, Copernicus, alKindi and all the rest missed in this time-line of the history of maths.

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