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 ...

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 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 ...

March 14 — a day you’re more likely than most others to eat — or throw — a pie and get a reduced price on your pizza. It’s all in celebration of pi (Greek letter π), the mathematical constant and ...

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 ...

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.

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, ...

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 ...