How Mathematics Happened: The First 50,000 Years

by Peter Strom Rudman

In this fascinating discussion of ancient mathematics, author Peter Rudman does not just chronicle the archeological record of what mathematics was done; he digs deeper into the more important question of why it was done in a particular way. Why did the Egyptians use a bizarre method of expressing fractions? Why did the Babylonians use an awkward number system based on multiples of 60? Rudman answers such intriguing questions, arguing that some mathematical...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1591024773
• ISBN13: 9781591024774
• Release Date: February 2007
• Publisher: Prometheus Books
• Length: 316 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 9.2"
• Age Range: 14 to 17 years
• Grade Range: Grades 9 to 12

Customer Reviews

How Mathematics Happened is an engaging read for students, scholars, and laypeople alike.

Written by Peter S. Rudman (Professor Physics, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology), How Mathematics Happened is explores the history and prehistory of human mathematical discovery. From the different ways Egyptians and Babylonians expressed fractions so that they would almost never be nonterminating fractions, to the evolution of pattern recognition to finger counting to pebble counting, to the underappreciated Mayan mathematics system, to concepts of abstraction and rigor invented by Greek mathematicians such as Pythagoras, Eratosthenes, and Hippasus. An amazing tour of human discovery, illustrated with black-and-white diagrams and punctuated with "fun questions" (with answers) for the reader to solve as well as references and an index, How Mathematics Happened is an engaging read for students, scholars, and laypeople alike.