History of Mathematics Timeline

Lifespans of Key Mathematicians

 * Thales of Miletus (c. 624 – c. 546 BC)
 * Pythagoras of Samos (c. 570 – c. 495 BC)
 * Plato (424/423 – 348/347 BC)
 * Eudoxus of Cnidus (c. 408 – c. 347 BC)
 * Archimedes of Syracuse ( c. 287 – c. 212 BC)
 * Claudius Ptolemy (c. AD 90 – c. 168)
 * Fra Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli (1445 – 1517)
 * Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia (1499/1500 – 13 December 1557)
 * Gerolamo Cardano (24 September 1501 – 21 September 1576)
 * John Napier of Merchiston (1550 – 4 April 1617)
 * Henry Briggs (February 1561 – 26 January 1630)
 * René Descartes (March 1596 – 11 February 1650)
 * Pierre de Fermat (August 1601 or 1607/8 – 12 January 1665)
 * Blaise Pascal (19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662)
 * Christiaan Huygens (4 April 1629 – 8 July 1695)
 * Isaac Barrow (October 1630 – 4 May 1677)
 * Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1727)
 * Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (July 1, 1646 – November 14, 1716)
 * Jacob Bernoulli (27 December 1654 – 16 August 1705)
 * Guillaume François Antoine, Marquis de l'Hôpital (1661 – 2 February 1704)
 * Johann Bernoulli (27 July 1667 – 1 January 1748)
 * Christian Goldbach (March 18, 1690 – November 20, 1764)
 * Leonhard Euler (15 April 1707 – 18 September 1783)
 * Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert (16 November 1717 – 29 October 1783)
 * Marie-Sophie Germain (April 1, 1776 – June 27, 1831)
 * Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (30 April 1777 – 23 February 1855)
 * Baron Augustin-Louis Cauchy (21 August 1789 – 23 May 1857)
 * Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor (March 3, 1845 – January 6, 1918)
 * David Hilbert (23 January 1862 – 14 February 1943)
 * Bertrand Arthur William Russell (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970)
 * Sir Andrew John Wiles (11 April 1953 - )

Key Events

 * Development of Agriculture (15,000 - 10,000 BC)
 * Egyptians use primitive numeric system. (2000 BC)
 * Babylonians find large pythagorean triples. Have Base-60 numeral system. (1900 - 1600 BC)
 * Spread of Greek Culture across Mediterranean (300 BC)
 * Alexandria established (332 BC)
 * Euclid sets up a school of mathematics in Alexandria. (300 BC)
 * Syracuse fell to the Roman Marcellus (212 BC)
 * Punic Wars end with Rome's destruction of Carthage. (146 BC)
 * Heron's Formula for Triangular Area: (AD 75)
 * Destruction of Alexandria (641 AD)
 * Johann Bernoulli publishes a chal­lenge problem in Leibniz's journal Acta Eruditorum. (June, 1696)
 * Euler appointed to the St. Petersburg Academy. (1727)
 * Euler lands a mathematical chair at St. Petersburg Academy. (1733)
 * Euler loses vision completely. (1771)
 * Germain wins a prize from the French Academy (1816)
 * Gauss learns that Germain is a woman (1807
 * Germain was to be awarded an honorary doctorate from Gottingen, but died before she could receive it. (1831)
 * Cantor writes on the Goldbach conjecture. (1894)
 * Gutenberg printing press. (1450)
 * Don Quixote (1605)
 * Hamlet (1601)
 * Wiles final version for the proof of Fermat's last theorem published in Annals of Mathematics. (1995)
 * Sturbridge Fair (1663)
 * James II, the last of the Stuart kings, fled the throne, to be replaced by William III and Mary II (1688)

Archimedes

 * Measurement of a Circle (225 BC)

Pacioli

 * Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalità

Fontana

 * General Trattato di numeri, et misure (1556)

Cardano

 * Ars Magna (1545)

John Napier

 * Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio (1614)

Henry Briggs

 * Arithmetica Logarithmica (1624)

Descartes

 * La Géométrie (1637)

Blaise Pascal

 * De l'Esprit géométrique

Christiaan Huygens

 * De ratiociniis in ludo aleae (1657)

Isaac Barrow

 * Lectiones Mathematicae (1683)

Newton

 * Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687)

Leibniz

 * A New Method for Maxima and Minima, as well as Tangents, which is impeded neither by *Fractional nor Irrational Quantities, and a Remark­ able Type of Calculus for this. (1684)

l'Hôspital

 * Analysis of the Infinitely Small (1696)

Euler

 * Introductio in Analysin Injinitorum (1748)
 * Opera Omnia (73 volumes of collected papers)

Gauss

 * New proof of the theorem that every integral algebraic function of one variable can be resolved into real factors (1799)
 * Disquisitiones Arithmeticae (1801)

Marie-Sophie Germain

 * Annales de chimie et de physique (1831)

Cantor

 * On a Property of the Collection of All Real Algebraic Numbers (1874)
 * Discours de la méthode (1637)

Bertrand Russell and Whitehead

 * Principia Mathematica (1910)