MTH412 History of Mathematics

Lead Faculty: Dr. Igor Ya Subbotin

Course Description

Examines currents in the development of mathematics and throughout ancient Egypt, Babylon, China, and the Middle East. It studies math's influence on society through the major events of Europe, contemporary developments, and some projections into the future, including the women and men who played key roles in evolution of mathematics.

Learning Outcomes

  • Discuss some of the major milestones in the development of mathematics and how public thought was influenced by them: from early mysticism to the sixteenth century desire to classify and categorize that introduced Arabic numerals to England and forever altered commerce, navigation and surveying; From the belief in the power of rational, logical thought expressed by Newton or Boole to the loss of certainty expressed in Godel's Theorem. From a sense of the individual soul to the attitude of becoming a statistics and to the possibility that the human brain state can be modeled with a fairly sophisticated computer.
  • Do some mathematics of various time periods.
  • Discuss current directions in mathematics education.