The History of Mathematics

What was it like to learn maths at school in the Victorian period? We visited the British Schools Museum in Hitchin to find out.

This article for pupils and teachers looks at a number that even the great mathematician, Pythagoras, found terrifying.

This article -useful for teachers and learners - gives a short account of the history of negative numbers.

Noticing the regular movement of the Sun and the stars has led to a desire to measure time. This article for teachers and learners looks at the history of humanity's need to measure things.

The Four Colour Conjecture was first stated just over 150 years ago, and finally proved conclusively in 1976. It is an outstanding example of how old ideas can be combined with new discoveries. prove a mathematical theorem.

The first of three articles on the History of Trigonometry. This takes us from the Egyptians to early work on trigonometry in China.

The second of three articles on the History of Trigonometry.

Some explanations of basic terms and some phenomena discovered by ancient astronomers

The third of three articles on the History of Trigonometry.

In Classical times the Pythagorean philosophers believed that all things were made up from a specific number of tiny indivisible particles called ‘monads’. Each object contained a different number of particles, and so they believed that ‘everything was number’.