Mathematics

For other meanings of "mathematics" or "math", see mathematics (disambiguation).

Euclid, Greek mathematician, 3rd century BC, known today as the father of geometry; shown here in a detail of The School of Athens by Raphael.

Mathematics Portal

Mathematics (colloquially, maths, or math in American English) is the body of knowledge centered on concepts such as quantity, structure, space, and change, and the academic discipline which studies them; Benjamin Peirce called it "the science that draws necessary conclusions".^[1] It evolved, through the use of abstraction and logical reasoning, from counting, calculation, measurement, and the study of the shapes and motions of physical objects. Mathematicians explore such concepts, aiming to formulate new conjectures and establish their truth by rigorous deduction from appropriately chosen axioms and definitions.^[2]

Knowledge and use of basic mathematics have always been an inherent and integral part of individual and group life. Refinements of the basic ideas are visible in ancient mathematical texts originating in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Ancient India, and Ancient China, with increased rigour later introduced by the ancient Greeks. From this point on, the development continued in short bursts until the Renaissance period of the 16th century where mathematical innovations interacted with new scientific discoveries leading to an acceleration in understanding that continues to the present day.^[3]

Today, mathematics is used throughout the world in many fields, including science, engineering, medicine and economics. The application of mathematics to such fields, often dubbed applied mathematics, inspires and makes use of new mathematical discoveries and has sometimes led to the development of entirely new disciplines. Mathematicians also engage in pure mathematics for its own sake without having any practical application in mind, although applications for what begins as pure mathematics are often discovered later.^[4]

History

Main article: History of mathematics

The 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 was a breakthrough in human thought. In addition to recognizing how to count physical objects, prehistoric peoples also recognized how to count abstract quantities, like time — days, seasons, years. Arithmetic (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division), naturally followed. Monolithic monuments testify to knowledge of geometry.

Further steps need writing or some other system for recording numbers such as tallies or the knotted strings called quipu used by the Inca empire to store numerical data. Numeral systems have been many and diverse.

From the beginnings of recorded history, the major disciplines within mathematics arose out of the need to do calculations relating to 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.

Mathematics has since been greatly extended, and there has been a fruitful interaction between mathematics and science, to the benefit of both. Mathematical 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 proofs