What is the history of Math?
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one day many millenia ago, grokk said to sprunk, ugh, hey..  there's like two dudes comin' over here with rocks.  sprunk said to grokk, ugh, there's like two more dudes comin' from our group with rocks.  grokk said to sprunk, ugh, so like, who do ya think is gonna win?.  sprunk said to grokk, whoah, like since we got us, and then two more, we got like four...  and they still only got two..  we'll win.\n\nthus math was born.
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The theorem (that every real integer can be written as the sum of four squares) was first stated (or enunciated) by Diophatus, the "father of algebra", around 1,800 years ago.  It may have been solved by Pierre de Fermet in 1638, but the first known, published proof was that of Joseph Lagrange in 1770.
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The father of algebra is Al Khwarizmi.\n \nHe wrote the first book on algebra. (The name "algebra" was first used by him.) Al Khwarizmi was born about 790 in Baghdad (now in Iraq) and died about 850.\n\nThe word for "Algebra" comes from the Arabic word for "al-jabr" which means "restoration of balance" in both sides of an equation.. Algebra was based on previous work from Greeks, Alexandrians in Egypt, and Hindus who had preserved the work from ancient Egyptians and Babylonians.\n\nIn the ninth century, al-Khwarizmi wrote one of the first Arabic algebras with both proofs and examples. Because of his work, he is called "the Father of Algebra." Al-Khwarizmi was a Persian born in the eighth century. He converted (changed) Babylonian and Hindu numerals into a workable system that almost anyone could use. He gave the name to his math as "al-jabr" which we know as "algebra".\n\nA Latin translation of al-Khwarizmi's book on algebra appeared in Europe in the 12th century. In the early 13th century the new algebra appeared in the writings of the famous Italian mathematician, Leonardo Fibonacci. So, algebra was brought into Europe from ancient Babylon, Egypt and India by the Arabs and then into Italy.
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Blaise Pascal? He invented the calculator. Maybe Isaac Newton, the inventor of calculus, or Charles Babbage, the inventor of the computer. Perhaps John Napier, who discovered how to add, subtract, multiply, divide, and even extract square roots simply by moving pieces on a chessboard? Tell you what, pick René Descartes, he's the inventor of coordinate geometry. These are all excellent choices!
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Have a read at Steven Hawkings "A Brief History of Time"  There is an on-line version somewhere so you don't have to buy it.  It is a long book but is a good effort at explaining very complex mathematics in lay persons terms.  I'm no genius and even I managed to grasp the majority of it.  \n\nIt runs through the history of mathematics and physics, big bang theory (singularity), dark matter, black holes, the lot.  Just don't let your friends find out.  They'll think you're a dweeb!
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Up to 1000 AD, π was known to less than 10 decimal digits only:\n\nAs early as the 19th century BC, Babylonian mathematicians were using π=25/8, which is within 0.5% of the exact value.\n\nAn Egyptian scribe named Ahmes wrote the oldest known text to give an approximate value for π. The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus dates from the Egyptian Second Intermediate Period—though Ahmes stated that he copied a Middle Kingdom papyrus (i.e. from before 1650 BC) —and describes the value in such a way that the result obtained comes out to 256 divided by 81 or 3.160.\n\nThe Indian astronomer Yajnavalkya gave astronomical calculations in the Shatapatha Brahmana (c. 9th century BC) that led to an approximation of π = 339/108 = 3.1389, which is correct to 2 decimal places when rounded.\n\nThe Chinese mathematician Liu Hui in AD 263 computed π to 3.141014, which is correct to 3 decimal places, though he suggested that 3.14 was a good enough approximation.\n\n\nGet more form the links below
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Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_numbers#History.
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now how is that related to math?
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Like language Mathematics is a language to explain the Universe. As language has developed over the various stages of the civilization, Mathematics as subject has also developed over thousands of years. Man is prior to his devises.
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Nice history of it with a mathematical explanation here :\n\nhttp://mathworld.wolfram.com/GoldenRatio.html
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Here - start with this website http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics and work from there.\n\nGood Luck!!!
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No one person appears to have invented algebra in all its complexity and\nglory. Instead, it appears to have sort of "grown up."  Western Europeans\nlearned their algebra from the works of the Persian mathematician Muhammed ibn\nMusa al-Khowarizmi.  The word, algebra, is a corruption of al-jabr which is\npart of the title of his treatise, Hisab al-jabr w'al muqabalah which means\nsomething like, "the science of reunion and reduction."  It is pretty clear\nthat the Persians got some of these ideas from earlier work of the Babylonians,\nEgyptians, Chinese, Hindus, and who knows else.
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In the history of math, it took certain conditions to kindle an interest in various branches of maths and related interests (astronomy, geometry, algebra). Accounting was necessary only where personal consumption varied strongly from personal production, i.e. in cities where communal irrigation or similar communal activities overrode the pure agricultural (or otherwise primary production) activity. Keeping a calendar became another agricultural necessity tied in to maths (or at least counting and accounting).\n\nMore recently, under the Nazi regime there was a school of German physicists which aimed at teaching physics not from mathematical formulary but in a purely textual approach, to counter the presumed "jewish" way we still practise at university.\n\nWhen I started school, another teaching paradigm was to start maths education with set theory.\n\nBoth of these approaches were ideologically based rather than culturally, but if a few generations of mathematicians are taught that way, it might change their outlook at maths to make a cultural difference.
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Mathematics can be defined as the logically rigorous study of topics such as quantity, structure, space, and change. Another view, held by many mathematicians, is that mathematics is the body of knowledge justified by deductive reasoning, starting from axioms and definitions.\n\nMathematics is used throughout the world in fields such as science, engineering, surveying, medicine, and economics. These fields both inspire and make use of new discoveries in mathematics. New mathematics is also created for its own sake, without any particular application in view.\n\nThe word "mathematics" comes from the Greek μάθημα (máthēma) meaning science, knowledge, or learning, and μαθηματικός (mathēmatikós), meaning fond of learning. It is often abbreviated math in North American English and maths in Commonwealth English .\nHistory\n\n    Main article: History of mathematics\n\nThe evolution of mathematics might be seen to be an ever-increasing series of abstractions, or alternatively an expansion of subject matter. The first abstraction was probably that of numbers. The realization that two apples and two oranges have something in common, namely that they fill the hands of exactly one person, was a breakthrough in human thought. In addition to recognizing how to count concrete objects, prehistoric peoples also recognized how to count abstract quantities, like time -- days, seasons, years. Arithmetic (e.g., addition, subtraction, multiplication and division), naturally followed. Monolithic monuments testify to a knowledge of geometry.\n\nFurther steps need writing or some other system for recording numbers such as tallies or the knotted strings called khipu used by the Inca empire to store numerical data. Numeral systems have been many and diverse.\n\nFrom the beginnings of recorded history, the major disciplines within mathematics arose out of the need to do calculations on taxation and commerce, to understand the relationships among numbers, to measure land, and to predict astronomical events. These needs can be roughly related to the broad subdivision of mathematics, into the studies of quantity, structure, space, and change.\n\nMathematics since has been much extended, and there has been a fruitful interaction between mathematics and science, to the benefit of both.\n\nMathematical discoveries have been made throughout history and continue to be made today. According to Mikhail B. Sevryuk, in the January 2006 issue of the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, "The number of papers and books included in the Mathematical Reviews database since 1940 (the first year of operation of MR) is now more than 1.9 million, and more than 75 thousand items are added to the database each year. The overwhelming majority of works in this ocean contain new mathematical theorems and their proof."\n[edit]\n\nInspiration, pure and applied mathematics, and aesthetics\n\n    Main article: Mathematical beauty\n\nMathematics arises wherever there are difficult problems that involve quantity, structure, space, or change. At first these were found in commerce, land measurement and later astronomy; nowadays, all sciences suggest problems studied by mathematicians, and many problems arise within mathematics itself. Newton invented infinitesimal calculus and Feynman his Feynman path integral using a combination of reasoning and physical insight, and today's string theory also inspires new mathematics. Some mathematics is only relevant in the area that inspired it, and is applied to solve further problems in that area. But often mathematics inspired by one area proves useful in many areas, and joins the general stock of mathematical concepts. The remarkable fact that even the "purest" mathematics often turns out to have practical applications is what Eugene Wigner has called "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics."\n\nAs in most areas of study, the explosion of knowledge in the scientific
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The origins of algebra can be traced to the ancient Babylonians, who developed an advanced arithmetical system with which they were able to do calculations in an algebraic fashion. With the use of this system they were able to apply formulae and calculate solutions for unknown values for a class of problems typically solved today by using linear equations, quadratic equations, and indeterminate linear equations. By contrast, most Egyptians of this era, and most Indian, Greek and Chinese mathematicians in the first millennium BC usually solved such equations by geometric methods, such as those described in the Moscow and Rhind Mathematical Papyri, Sulba Sutras, Euclid's Elements, and The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art. This geometric work of the Greeks, typified in the Elements provided the framework for generalizing formulae beyond the solution of particular problems into more general systems of stating and solving equations.\n\nIndian mathematicians proceeded to write treatises on algebraic means of solving equations from the end of the first millennium BC, followed by Hellenistic mathematicians from the early first millennium AD. Important algebraic works from this general era include the Bakhshali Manuscript, the works of Hero of Alexandria, the Arithmetica of Diophantus, the Aryabhatiya of Aryabhata, and the Brahma Sputa Siddhanta of Brahmagupta.\n\nThe word "algebra" is named after the Arabic word "al-jabr" from the title of the book al-Kitāb al-muḫtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-ğabr wa-l-muqābala, meaning The book of Summary Concerning Calculating by Transposition and Reduction, a book written by Persian mathematician Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Ḵwārizmī in 820. The word al-jabr means "reunion". Al-Khwarizmi is often considered the "father of algebra" (though that title is also given to Diophantus), as much of his works on reduction are still in use today. Another Persian mathematician Omar Khayyam developed algebraic geometry and found the general geometric solution of the cubic equation. Indian mathematician Bhaskara and Chinese mathematician Zhu Shijie solved cubic, quartic (biquadratic) and higher-order polynomial equations.\n\nAnother key event in the further development of algebra was the general algebraic solution of the cubic and quartic equations, developed in the mid-16th century. The idea of a determinant was developed by Japanese mathematician Kowa Seki in the 17th century, followed by Gottfried Leibniz ten years later, for the purpose of solving systems of simultaneous linear equations using matrices. Gabriel Cramer also did some work on matrices and determinants in the 18th century. Abstract algebra was developed in the 19th century, initially focusing on what is now called Galois theory, and on constructibility issues.\n\nThe stages of the development of symbolic algebra are roughly as follows:\nRhetorical algebra, which was developed by the Babylonians and remained dominant up to the 16th century;\nGeometric constructive algebra, which was emphasised by the Vedic Indian and classical Greek mathematicians;\nSyncopated algebra, as developed by Diophantus and in the Bakhshali Manuscript; and\nSymbolic algebra, which sees its culmination in the work of Leibniz.\n \nCover of the 1621 edition of Diophantus' Arithmetica, translated into Latin by Claude Gaspard Bachet de Méziriac.\n\nA timeline of key algebraic developments are as follows:\nCirca 1800 BC: The Old Babylonian Strassburg tablet seeks the solution of a quadratic elliptic equation.\nCirca 1600 BC: The Plimpton 322 tablet gives a table of Pythagorean triples in Babylonian Cuneiform script.\nCirca 800 BC: Indian mathematician Baudhayana, in his Baudhayana Sulba Sutra, discovers Pythagorean triples algebraically, finds geometric solutions of linear equations and quadratic equations of the forms ax2 = c and ax2 + bx = c, and finds two sets of positive integral solutions to a set of simultaneous Diopha
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calculations or math actually started way back ,no reference to an exact time but the indians during the 3rd century B.C were well advanced in maths , and so were the greeks,egyptians and chinese.
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http://mathworld.wolfram.com\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics