History Of Mathematics In Africa 2000 2011

This volume constitutes an updated version of the bibliography published in 2004 by the African Mathematical Union. The African Studies Association attributed the original edition a 'ÂÂspecial mention'ÂÂ in the 2006 Conover-Porter Award competition. The book contains over 1600 bibliographic entries. The appendices contain additional bibliographic information on (1) mathematicians of the Diaspora, (2) publications by Africans on the history of mathematics outside Africa, (3) time-reckoning and astronomy in African history and cultures, (4) string figures in Africa, (5) examples of books published by African mathematicians, (6) board games in Africa, (7) research inspired by geometric aspects of the 'ÂÂsona'ÂÂ tradition. The book concludes with several indices (subject, country, region, author, ethnographic and linguistic, journal, mathematicians). Professor Jan Persens of the University of the Western Cape (South Africa) and president of the African Mathematical Union (2000-2004) wrote the preface.

This volume presents a catalogue of over 2000 doctoral theses by Africans in all fields of mathematics, including applied mathematics, mathematics education and history of mathematics. The introduction contains information about distribution by country, institutions, period, and by gender, about mathematical density, and mobility of mathematicians. Several appendices are included (female doctorate holders, doctorates in mathematics education, doctorates awarded by African universities to non-Africans, doctoral theses by non-Africans about mathematics in Africa, activities of African mathematicians at the service of their communities). Paulus Gerdes compiled the information in his capacity of Chairman of the African Mathematical Union Commission for the History of Mathematics in Africa (AMUCHMA). The book contains a preface by Mohamed Hassan, President of the African Academy of Sciences (AAS) and Executive Director of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS). (383 pp.)

This volume on ethnomathematics in Central Africa fills a gap in the current literature, focusing on a region rarely explored by other publications. It highlights the discovery of the Ishango rod, which was found to be the oldest mathematical tool in humanity's history, thereby shifting the origin of mathematics to the heart of Africa, and explores the different scientific hypotheses that emerged as a result. While it contains some high-level mathematics, the non-mathematical reader can easily skip these portions and enjoy the book’s survey of African history, culture, and art.

This is the first comprehensive International Handbook on the History of Mathematics Education, covering a wide spectrum of epochs and civilizations, countries and cultures. Until now, much of the research into the rich and varied history of mathematics education has remained inaccessible to the vast majority of scholars, not least because it has been written in the language, and for readers, of an individual country. And yet a historical overview, however brief, has become an indispensable element of nearly every dissertation and scholarly article. This handbook provides, for the first time, a comprehensive and systematic aid for researchers around the world in finding the information they need about historical developments in mathematics education, not only in their own countries, but globally as well. Although written primarily for mathematics educators, this handbook will also be of interest to researchers of the history of education in general, as well as specialists in cultural and even social history.

At its meeting in April 1990 at the University of Cambridge, the Executive Committee of the International Mathematical Union (IMU) decided that the largely unorganized archives of the Union should be properly arranged and catalogued. Simultaneously, the Executive Committee expressed the wish that a history of the Union should be written [1). As Secretary of the Union, I had proposed that these issues be dis cussed at the Cambridge meeting, but without having had in mind any personal role in the practical execution of such projects. At that time, the papers of the IMU were stored in Zurich, at the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule, and I saw no reason why they could not remain there. At about this time, Professor K. Chandrasekharan produced a handwritten article titled "The Prehistory of the International Mathematical Union" [2), and it seemed to me that this might serve as the beginning of a more compre hensive history. I had first thought that Tuulikki MakeUiinen, who during eight years as the Office Secretary ofthe IMU had become well acquainted with the Union, would do the arranging of the archives in Zurich. She had a preliminary look at the material there, but it soon became clear that the amount of work required to bring order to it was too great to be accomplished in a few short visits from Helsinki. The total volume of material was formidable.

This anthology fosters an interdisciplinary dialogue between the mathematical and artistic approaches in the field where mathematical and artistic thinking and practice merge. The articles included highlight the most significant current ideas and phenomena, providing a multifaceted and extensive snapshot of the field and indicating how interdisciplinary approaches are applied in the research of various cultural and artistic phenomena. The discussions are related, for example, to the fields of aesthetics, anthropology, art history, art theory, artistic practice, cultural studies, ethno-mathematics, geometry, mathematics, new physics, philosophy, physics, study of visual illusions, and symmetry studies. Further, the book introduces a new concept: the interdisciplinary aesthetics of mathematical art, which the editors use to explain the manifold nature of the aesthetic principles intertwined in these discussions.