Math History

Math History: A Long-Form Mathematics Textbook, by Jay Cummings, looks at how people in different eras thought about mathematics. It covers the problems they cared about, how they expressed those problems and how they went about solving them, and it traces the growth of the subject over time.

The book examines the problems that gave rise to new fields of mathematics, the ideas that let those fields flourish, and the theorems and conjectures that drove them toward their modern form.

It also looks at the human side of the subject: the people who shaped mathematics, the worlds they lived in, how different cultures approached it, and how the mathematical project has spread across the globe.