History of MathED 205 Section 06

ByLia Day

Author

Lia Day was born in Detroit, Michigan. Her mother was a teacher and her father was a lawyer. At a very young age Lia realized that she was great at math, and loved helping other people. Putting these two skills together, she realized that the only career choice for her, was to be a math teacher.

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Contents

• Math in Africa• Euclid• Karl Friedrich Gauss• Joseph-Louis Lagrange• Niels Henrik Abel• Resources

Math in Africa

• In Africa math was used in many ways. From building and irrigation, to hunting.• Many of the first math geniuswere from Egypt.• Some of the first writtenDocuments on math camefrom Egypt

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Math in Africa cont.

• The first written numerals came from Egypt, around 3100 BC. They also had some of the earliest calendars using numbers.

• The concept of zero was also discovered in Ancient Africa.

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Euclid

• Euclid produced the most influential mathematicaltextbook of all time, the Elements.• Euclids main contributionwas in the area of geometry,and what is now called EuclidsLemma, and the Euclidean algorithm.

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Karl Friedrich Gauss• Considered the greatestmathematician of all time.He was born in Germany in 1777. He provided a proof for the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra. He also introduced the idea of congruence classes.• When he died, he requested to havea 17 sided polygon, his disovery carvedon his tombstone.

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Joseph Louis-Lagrange• Lagrange was born in Italy in1736. He had a hand in the numberingof the metric system. He was responsiblefor a few proofs in the area of calculus.He also helped in the area of finding the area under a curve, and thus came the idea of Lagrange multipliers.

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Niels Henrik Abel• Abel was born in Norway in 1802. He proved by the age of 18 that there existed no formula for finding roots of polynomials of degree greater than four.• His work was never recognized whilehe was still alive. His only published work was not accepted because it was toohard to follow since it was so short.

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Conclusion of Mathematicians

• The mathematicians who prove the theorems that we use everyday are usually not recognized past having a formula named after them. Most students have no idea why they do the things they do in mathematics, and do not question it either. However, it is important to know where these things come from, and who they came from.

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Video on Math in Africa

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Video on the History of Calculus

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Resources• Information on Niels Henrik Abelhttp://fermatslasttheorem.blogspot.com/2006/02/niels-henrik-abel.html• Information on Euclidhttp://www.groups.dcs.stand.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/

Euclid.html• Information on Lagrangehttp://www-groups.dcs.stand.ac.uk/~history/

Mathematicians/Lagrange.html

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Concept Map

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