Around 1900 B.C., a student in the Sumerian city of Nippur, in what’s now Iraq, copied a multiplication table onto a clay tablet. Some 4,000 years later, that schoolwork survives, as do the student’s ...

In 1843, William Rowan Hamilton had a four-dimensional flash of insight that still shapes our three-dimensional world. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Researchers in Australia have made a discovery that may shake up the history of mathematics, revealing evidence of applied geometry being used for the purposes of land surveying some 3,700 years ago.

In his book The Mathematical Universe, mathematician William Dunham wrote of John Venn’s namesake legacy, the Venn diagram, “No one in the long history of mathematics ever became better known for less ...

IN a recent number of NATURE (June 30) there appeared a review of a book by G. Mannoury on the philosophy of mathematics, and the reviewer emphasised a statement of the author to the effect that the ...

Did you know that every time you look at a skyscraper, a bridge, or even the screen in your hand, you are seeing the power of shapes and measurements in action? This is the world of geometry. At its ...

A RECENT number of the American Mathematical Monthly (56, No. 1, Pt. 2, pp. 114 ; University of Buffalo, N.Y. ; 1 dollar), entitled "Outline of the History of Mathematics" by R. C. Archibald, ...

Ittay Weiss does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their ...

Sūnya, nulla, ṣifr, zevero, zip and zilch are among the many names of the mathematical concept of nothingness. Historians, journalists and others have variously identified the symbol’s ...

One of the biggest mathematical achievements in human history has to do with the origin of nothing—or zero, to be more specific. Researchers at the University of Oxford's Bodleian Library recently ...