History of Math Text Suggestions

• Specific Books, Articles and Authors
• Online Bookstores and Publishing Lists

Below is a list of resources mentioned during the Brown Dot discussion that took place in June 2000. The request was for books suitable for a History of Math course in which the prerequisite is Precalculus. A cross-culteral emphasis was desired. As a warning, not all books had been read by the people suggesting them, and many came with suggestions of the work's strengths and weaknesses.

If you are a Brown Dot and would like to see the commentary that came with the suggestions, email me at kfogel@clunet.edu.

Books and Articles

Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Sharles Seife (MAA review)

The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero by Robert Kaplan

Articles/Books by David Dennis, including:

• "Functions of a Curve: Leibnitz's Original Notion of Functions and Its meaning for the Parabola", David Dennis and Jere Confrey, The College Mathematics Journal, V26, n2, March 1995.
• "The Creation of Continuous Exponents", David Dennis and Jere Confrey, CBMS Issues in Mathematics Education, v6, 1996.
• "The Role of Historical Studies in Mathematics and Science Educational Research", David Dennis, in _Research Design in Mathematics and Science Education", Dick Leash and Anthony Kelly (eds), 2000.

Books/Articles about Ramanujan:

• The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan by Robert Kanigel
• The introduction to Ramanujan's collected works
• Ramanujan : Twelve Lectures on Subjects Suggested by His Life and Work by G.H. Hardy.

Paulus Gerdes' works about African mathematics (for example, Geometry from Africa), as well as about Ethnomathematics.

Martzloff, Jean-Claude, A History of Chinese Mathematics. (Translated from French). Springer-Verlag. 1997, 485 pp. ISBN 3-540-54749-5.

V.S. Varadarajan, Algebra in Ancient and Modern Times. Co-published by the AMS and Hindustan Books. 1998, 142 pp., Softcover. ISBN 0-8218-0989-X.

Kline, Morris, Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times. Oxford University Press.

Kline, Morris, Mathematics for the Non-mathematicain. Dover Press.

Kline, Morris, Mathematics and the Physical World. Dover Press. History with applications.

Cajori, History of Mathematics: Fifth Edition. (AMS/Chelsea) (written in 1893)

On-line Bookstores and publishing lists for History of Math selections

AMS/London Mathematical Society

The AMS and the London Mathematical Society's joint series on the History of Mathematics. Books in the series listed at the AMS on-line bookstore website:http://www.ams.org/cgi-bin/bookstore/bookpromo/hmathseries

MAA

http://www.maa.org/pubs/books/history.html.

Springer (the history books that are also listed as textbooks)

http://www.springer-ny.com/math/text_books/history.html

Birkhauser

History and Philosophy of Science/Trade" books: http://www.birkhauser.com/cgi-win/category/8.

Full collection of mathematics books: http://www.birkhauser.com/cgi-win/category/7.