An eclipse of the moon. You can see the curved shadow of the Earth. Once people have seen that something happens through observation, sooner or later it will occur to them to ask why it happens. And is there any way to prove that it will happen the same way every time? Sumerians developed advanced math to [...]
Math was a very exciting subject to be working on during the Middle Ages in Europe. Little by little, math experts in Europe were learning from Islamic math experts about what we call Arabic numbers (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9) (though the numbers came originally from India). Leaning Tower of Pisa (built while Fibonacci was a child) The first of these experts was Adelard [...]
Geometry: This is an equilateral trangle. What is geometry? The simplest geometric idea is the point, and then the line, the plane, and the solid. Shapes like circles, squares, rectangles, and triangles are flat, and we can think of them as being parts of a plane, flat like a drawing. What is a point? What is a plane? From planes to solids All [...]
Proof for the area of a circle: Divide a circle up into sections like an orange Euclid's proof We know it's true that A=πr-squared is the area of a circle, but how can we prove that this formula is always true for every possible circle? Here's how Euclid did it. Who was Euclid? Area of a circle More [...]
Al Tusi's diagram of linear motion from circular motion In the Early Middle Ages, before the formation of the Islamic Empire, Buddhists ran the world's biggest universities. One was in India, at Nalanda. Another was in what is now Pakistan, at Taxila. In Egypt, the University of Alexandria was still an important center of learning, too. Most serious scholars went to [...]
Diagram of an eye, by Ibn al-Haytham (ca. 1000 AD) Ibn al-Haytham was born about 965 AD in Basra, near the Persian Gulf (modern Iraq), and when he grew up he went to Cairo, then a rich university center under Fatimid rule, and became a scientist. Al-Haytham first worked on a plan to build a dam across the Nile [...]
Jainism: A Jain statue, possibly Mahavira, from about 1200 AD When did Jains get started? Nobody knows when people first began to follow Jain ideas. Some Jain traditions take their history back to about 2000 BC, in the Harappan period. More about Buddhism Indian religions All our India articles The first definite evidence of Jain faith, [...]
Greek mathematics: An Egyptian papyrus from about 100 AD which is a piece of one of Euclid's books Greek math: geometry not algebra Because people in ancient Greece had only very clumsy ways of writing down numbers, they didn't like algebra. Ancient Greek numbers What is algebra? All our ancient Greece articles They found it very hard [...]
An Egyptian papyrus from about 100 AD which is a piece of one of Euclid's books Euclid's life and background Nobody knows much about Euclid's life anymore - it is all forgotten. We only know that he worked at the University of Alexandria, in Egypt, for a while. University of Alexandria Greek mathematics Egyptian math [...]
Archimedes was from Syracuse, Sicily. Here you see it with Mount Etna in the background When did Archimedes live? Archimedes was born about 287 BC, so he was a little younger than Euclid. Archimedes' father was an astronomer, so he grew up knowing a lot about science and math. Who was Euclid? Greek astronomy History [...]
