Editor: Janet Beery
Associate Editors: Amy Ackerberg-Hastings, Janet Heine Barnett, Kathleen Clark, Lawrence D'Antonio, Douglas Ensley, Victor Katz, Daniel Otero, Gabriela Sanchis, Randy Schwartz, Lee Stemkoski, Gary Stoudt
Founding Editors: Victor Katz, Frank Swetz
A GeoGebra Rendition of One of Omar Khayyam's Solutions for a Cubic Equation, by Deborah Kent and Milan Sherman
How the 11th century Persian mathematician, philosopher, and poet geometrically determined a positive real solution to a cubic equation
Edmund Halley, 1740, by Andrew Wynn Owen
An historical poem by a prize-winning Oxford poet in the form of an autobiographical reflection by Edmund Halley
President James A. Garfield's Proof of the Pythagorean Theorem, by Sid Kolpas
Garfield's 1876 proof, plus a memorial visiting card featuring a photograph of Garfield (1831-1881)
Descartes' Method for Constructing Roots of Polynomials with 'Simple' Curves, by Gary Rubinstein
Descartes' methods from his 1637 'Geometry' explicated and illustrated using interactive applets
Letter and Visiting Card of Augustus De Morgan, by Sid Kolpas
Visiting card with photograph (circa 1866), brief biography, student sketch (1865), An Essay on Probabilities (1838), and letter to Indologist H. H. Wilson (1843)
When Was Pierre de Fermat Born?, by Friedrich Katscher
An argument that Pierre de Fermat was born in 1607 rather than in 1601
The Duplicators: Eutocius's Collection of Cube Duplications, by Colin B. P. McKinney
Solutions by ancient Greek mathematicians of the classical duplicating the cube problem – with extra tools allowed! – featuring translations from the Greek and interactive applets
Archimedes' Method for Computing Areas and Volumes, by Gabriela R. Sanchis
Archimedes' use of the Law of the Lever to compute areas and volumes in The Method, with classroom-ready examples, exercises, and interactive applets
HOM SIGMAA 2016 Student Paper Contest Winners
Download the two winning papers from the 13th annual competition, "A Latent Element of Alice's Agency in Wonderland: Conservative Victorian Mathematics" and "The Evolution of the Circle Method in Additive Prime Number Theory."
Al-Maghribî’s Mecca Problem Meets Sudoku, by Ilhan M. Izmirli
Solutions to an early 17th century puzzle from Istanbul can be generated from solutions to modern day Sudoku puzzles.
Johannes Scheubel's 1551 Algebrae Compendiosa, by Sid Kolpas
Selected examples for classroom use feature early algebraic notation and methods.
Misseri-Calendar: A Calendar Embedded in Icelandic Nature, Society, and Culture, by Kristín Bjarnadóttir
History of this two-season calendar from Viking times to today, with animations and ideas for your classroom.
Mathematical Treasures, by Frank J. Swetz
Index to Mathematical Treasures Collection: Images of historical texts and objects from libraries, museums, and individuals around the world for use in your classroom!
Mathematical Treasures added during 2016:
Three Old Babylonian Tablets (1990-1700 BCE)
Tomb of Menna (1420–1411 BCE)
Archimedes on Curved Surfaces (1350-1372, original: 3rd century BCE)
Carmen de Algorism (c. 1240)
Al-Tusi's Euclid's Elements (13th century)
Geometry Treatise from Islamic Spain (13th century)
Manual of Islamic Inheritance Law (13th century)
Anonymous Practica geometriae (13th century)
De triangulis of Jordanus de Nemore (14th century or later copy of 13th century manuscript)
Richard Swineshead's Opus aureum calculationum (1477, original ca 1350)
Alberti's Methods for Measuring Heights (15th century)
The Arithmetic of Grammateus (1518)
Johannes Scheubel's Algebrae Compendiosa (1551), contributed by Sid Kolpas
Galileo's Two New Sciences (1638)
John Pell's Controversy with Longomontanus concerning the Quadrature of the Circle (1647)
Adriaan Vlacq's Tabellen der Sinuum, Tangentium, und Secantium (1663, original 1636)
Rene Descartes, Lettres (1663)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's Dissertation de Arte Combinatoria (1666)
Letter on Quadrature from Leibniz to Huygens (1674, published 1859)
Mathematics and Architecture (1676)
John Collins' Letter on 'Defects in Algebra' (reprinted in 1684)
Opera mathematica of John Wallis (1693-1699)
John Wallis's Collected Works (volume 1, 1695)
Thomas Fanlet deLagny's New Elements of Arithmetic and Algebra (1697)
Arbuthnot’s Essay on Usefulness of Mathematics (1745, original 1701)
Andrea Tacquet's Practical and Theoretical Arithmetic (1704, original 1656) and Elementa geometricae (1752, original 1654)
Halley's Conics of Apollonius (1710)
Christian Wolff's Foundations of Mathematics (1710/1772)
Jacques Ozanam's A Complete Course of the Mathematicks (translated 1712)
John Lowthorp, ed., The Philosophical Transactions and Collections, to the Year 1700 (1731 edition)
John Ward's Young Mathematician's Guide (1734, original 1703)
Correspondence between Leibniz and Johannes Bernoulli (1745)
Mayer's Mathematischer Atlas (1745)
Thomas Simpson's Doctrine of Annuities and Reversions
Waring's Meditationes Analyticae (1785, original 1773)
Webber's Mathematics for Harvard Students (1808, original 1801)
Thomas Jefferson's Octagon (18th–19th centuries)
Pierre Simon de Laplace, mathematics curriculum in Journal de L’Ecole Polytechnique (1812)
John Bonnycastle's Arithmetic (1815, original 1780) and Algebra (1811, original 1782)
Etienne Bézout's First Principles of the Differential and Integral Calculus, translated by John Farrar and George Barrell Emerson (1824, 1764-1767 original)
Augustus De Morgan's Elements of Arithmetic (1858, original 1830)
Augustus De Morgan's Elementary Illustrations of the Differential and Integral Calculus (1899, original 1832)
The Calculus of Elias Loomis (1858, original 1835)
Cambridge Problems 1801-1820 (1836)
De Morgan's Essay on Probabilities and their Application to Life Contingencies and Insurance Offices (1838)
Abel's Complete Works (1839)
Augustus De Morgan's Differential and Integral Calculus (1842)
Letter and Visiting Card of Augustus De Morgan, contributed by Sid Kolpas
Charles Davies's The Logic and Utility of Mathematics (1869, original 1850)
A New Mathematics Curriculum for China (1853/1859)
George Hale Puckle's An Elementary Treatise on Conic Sections and Algebraic Geometry (1854)
Comte's Philosophy of Mathematics (1855)
Augustus De Morgan's Budget of Paradoxes (1872) (posted 12/21/16)
Hankel's History of Mathematics (1874)
Clebsch's Vorlesungen über geometrie (3 images) (1876)
James A. Garfield's Proof of the Pythagorean Theorem (1876), contributed by Sid Kolpas
Jullien Models for Descriptive Geometry (ca 1880), contributed by Amy Shell-Gellasch
Moritz Cantor's History of Mathematics (1880-1908)
Darboux's Theory of Surfaces (1887)
Zeuthen's History of Mathematics (1896, original 1893)
Collected Works of Tchebychef (Chebyshev, 1899)
Poincaré's Science and Hypothesis (1902)
The Principia Mathematica of Russell and Whitehead (1910-1913)
F. G. Hill's Development of Arabic Numerals in Europe (1915)
Model of Elongated Pentagonal Pyramid (mid-20th century), contributed by Peggy Kidwell
Hewlett-Packard HP28S Handheld Electronic Calculator from the AMS Centennial Meeting (1988), contributed by Peggy Kidwell
Review of Mathematics in Ancient Egypt: A Contextual History, by Annette Imhausen. Reviewed by Frank J. Swetz.
Our reviewer finds the book to be "well written" and "well researched," and is grateful to the author for summarizing scholarship to date.
Review of Elements of Mathematics: From Euclid to Gödel, by John Stillwell. Reviewed by Frank J. Swetz.
Our reviewer concludes: "If you want to teach mathematics with its history, this is a way to do it!"