Leonardo da Pisa, perhaps better known as Fibonacci (ca. 1170 – ca. 1240), selected the most useful parts of Greco-Arabic geometry for the book known as De Practica Geometrie. This translation offers a reconstruction of De Practica Geometrie as the author judges Fibonacci wrote it, thereby correcting inaccuracies found in numerous modern histories. It is a high quality translation with supplemental text to explain text that has been more freely translated. A bibliography of primary and secondary resources follows the translation, completed by an index of names and special words.

Medieval Europe was a meeting place for the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic civilizations, and the fertile intellectual exchange of these cultures can be seen in the mathematical developments of the time. This sourcebook presents original Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic sources of medieval mathematics, and shows their cross-cultural influences. Most of the Hebrew and Arabic sources appear here in translation for the first time. Readers will discover key mathematical revelations, foundational texts, and sophisticated writings by Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic-speaking mathematicians, including Abner of Burgos's elegant arguments proving results on the conchoid—a curve previously unknown in medieval Europe; Levi ben Gershon’s use of mathematical induction in combinatorial proofs; Al-Mu’taman Ibn Hūd’s extensive survey of mathematics, which included proofs of Heron’s Theorem and Ceva’s Theorem; and Muhyī al-Dīn al-Maghribī’s interesting proof of Euclid’s parallel postulate. The book includes a general introduction, section introductions, footnotes, and references. The Sourcebook in the Mathematics of Medieval Europe and North Africa will be indispensable to anyone seeking out the important historical sources of premodern mathematics.

"In recent decades, there has been extensive research on Greek mathematics that has considerably enlarged the scope of this area of inquiry. Traditionally, "Greek mathematics" has referred to the axiomatic work of Archimedes, Apollonius, and others in the first three centuries BCE. However, there is a wide body of mathematical work that appeared in the eastern Mediterranean during the time it was under Greek influence (from approximately 400 BCE to 600 CE), which remains under-explored in the existing scholarship. This sourcebook provides an updated look at Greek mathematics, bringing together classic Greek texts with material from lesser-known authors, as well as newly uncovered texts that have been omitted in previous scholarship. The book adopts a broad scope in defining mathematical practice, and as such, includes fields such as music, optics, and architecture. It includes important sources written in languages other than Greek in the eastern Mediterranean area during the period from 400 BCE to 600 CE, which show some influence from Greek culture. It also includes passages that highlight the important role mathematics played in philosophy, pedagogy, and popular culture. The book is organized topically; chapters include arithmetic, plane geometry, astronomy, and philosophy, literature, and education. Within each chapter, the (translated) texts are organized chronologically. The book weaves together ancient commentary on classic Greek works with the works themselves to show how the understanding of mathematical ideas changed over the centuries"--

This book brings together 10 experiments which introduce historical perspectives into mathematics classrooms for 11 to 18-year-olds. The authors suggest that students should not only read ancient texts, but also should construct, draw and manipulate. The different chapters refer to ancient Greek, Indian, Chinese and Arabic mathematics as well as to contemporary mathematics. Students are introduced to well-known mathematicians—such as Gottfried Leibniz and Leonard Euler—as well as to less famous practitioners and engineers. Always, there is the attempt to associate the experiments with their scientific and cultural contexts. One of the main values of history is to show that the notions and concepts we teach were invented to solve problems. The different chapters of this collection all have, as their starting points, historic problems—mathematical or not. These are problems of exchanging and sharing, of dividing figures and volumes as well as engineers’ problems, calculations, equations and congruence. The mathematical reasoning which accompanies these actions is illustrated by the use of drawings, folding, graphical constructions and the production of machines.

In 2000, Keith Devlin set out to research the life and legacy of the medieval mathematician Leonardo of Pisa, popularly known as Fibonacci, whose book Liber abbaci has quite literally affected the lives of everyone alive today. Although he is most famous for the Fibonacci numbers--which, it so happens, he didn't invent--Fibonacci's greatest contribution was as an expositor of mathematical ideas at a level ordinary people could understand. In 1202, Liber abbaci--the "Book of Calculation"--Introduced modern arithmetic to the Western world. Yet Fibonacci was long forgotten after his death, and it was not until the 1960s that his true achievements were finally recognized. Finding Fibonacci is Devlin's compelling firsthand account of his ten-year quest to tell Fibonacci's story. Devlin, a math expositor himself, kept a diary of the undertaking, which he draws on here to describe the project's highs and lows, its false starts and disappointments, the tragedies and unexpected turns, some hilarious episodes, and the occasional lucky breaks. You will also meet the unique individuals Devlin encountered along the way, people who, each for their own reasons, became fascinated by Fibonacci, from the Yale professor who traced modern finance back to Fibonacci to the Italian historian who made the crucial archival discovery that brought together all the threads of Fibonacci's astonishing story. Fibonacci helped to revive the West as the cradle of science, technology, and commerce, yet he vanished from the pages of history. This is Devlin's search to find him. -- Back cover.

Leon Battista Alberti was an outstanding polymath of the fifteenth century, alongside Piero della Francesca and before Leonardo da Vinci. While his contributions to architecture and the visual arts are well known and available in good English editions, and much of his literary and social writings are also available in English, his mathematical works are not well represented in readily available, accessible English editions have remained accessible only to specialists. The four treatises included here – Ludi matematici, De Componendis Cifris, Elementi di pittura and De lunularum quadratura – are extremely valuable in rounding out the portrait of this multitalented thinker. The treatises are presented in modern English translations, with commentary that is intended to make evident the depths of Alberti’s knowledge as well as address the treatises’ mathematical, historical and cultural context, their classical Greek roots, and their relationship to later works by Renaissance thinkers.

This book presents a broad selection of articles mainly published during the last two decades on a variety of topics within the history of mathematics, mostly focusing on particular aspects of mathematical practice. This book is of interest to, and provides methodological inspiration for, historians of science or mathematics and students of these disciplines.