La Habra High School
Math History Timeline
Pre-historic and Ancient Times
1,000,000 B.C. - 500 A.D.

Math History
Prehistory and Ancient Times | Middle Ages | Renaissance | Reformation | Baroque Era | Enlightenment | Revolutions | Liberalism | 20th Century ...
non-Math History
Prehistory and Ancient Times | Middle Ages | Renaissance | Reformation | Baroque Era | Enlightenment | Revolutions | Liberalism | 20th Century ...
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About 30000BC Palaeolithic peoples in central Europe and France record numbers on bones.
About 25000BC Early geometric designs used.
About 4000BC Babylonian and Egyptian calendars in use.
About 3400BC The first symbols for numbers, simple straight lines, are used in Egypt.
About 3000BC Babylonians begin to use a sexagesimal number system for recording financial transactions. It is a place-value system without a zero place value.
About 3000BC Hieroglyphic numerals in use in Egypt.
About 3000BC The abacus is developed in the Middle East and in areas around the Mediterranean. A somewhat different type of abacus is used in China.
About 1950BC Babylonians solve quadratic equations.
About 1850BC Babylonians know Pythagoras's Theorem.
About 1800BC Babylonians use multiplication tables.
About 1750BC The Babylonians solve linear and quadratic algebraic equations, compile tables of square and cube roots. They use Pythagoras's theorem and use mathematics to extend knowledge of astronomy.
About 1700BC The Rhind papyrus (sometimes called the Ahmes papyrus) is written. It shows that Egyptian mathematics has developed many techniques to solve problems. Multiplication is based on repeated doubling, and division uses successive halving. 3.16 is the value for p.
About 1000BC Chinese use counting boards for calculation.
575BC Thales brings Babylonian mathematical knowledge to Greece. He uses geometry to solve problems such as calculating the height of pyramids and the distance of ships from the shore.
About 540BC Counting rods used in China.
530BC Pythagoras of Samos moves to Croton in Italy and teaches mathematics, geometry, music, and reincarnation.
About 500BC Panini's work on Sanskrit grammar is the forerunner of the modern formal language theory.
About 500BC The Babylonian sexagesimal number system is used to record and predict the positions of the Sun, Moon and planets.
About 465BC Hippasus writes of a "sphere of 12 pentagons", which must refer to a dodecahedron.
About 450BC Greeks begin to use written numerals.
About 450BC Zeno of Elea presents his paradoxes.
About 440BC Hippocrates of Chios writes the Elements which is the first compilation of the elements of geometry.
About 425BC Theodorus of Cyrene shows that certain square roots are irrational. This had been shown earlier but it is not known by whom.
About 400BC Babylonians use a symbol to indicate an empty place in their numbers recorded in cuneiform writing. There is no indication that this was in any way thought of as a number.
387BC Plato founds his Academy in Athens
About 375BC Archytas of Tarentum develops mechanics. He studies the "classical problem" of doubling the cube and applies mathematical theory to music. He also constructs the first automaton.
About 360BC Eudoxus of Cnidus develops the theory of proportion, and the method of exhaustion.
About 340BC Aristaeus writes Five Books concerning Conic Sections.
About 300BC Euclid gives a systematic development of geometry in his Stoicheion (The Elements). He also gives the laws of reflection in Catoptrics.
About 290BC Aristarchus of Samos uses a geometric method to calculate the distance of the Sun and the Moon from Earth. He also proposes that the Earth orbits the Sun.
About 250BC In On the Sphere and the Cylinder, Archimedes gives the formulae for calculating the volume of a sphere and a cylinder. In Measurement of the Circle he gives an approximation of the value of with a method which will allow improved approximations. In Floating Bodies he presents what is now called "Archimedes' principle" and begins the study of hydrostatics. He writes works on two- and three-dimensional geometry, studying circles, spheres and spirals. His ideas are far ahead of his contemporaries and include applications of an early form of integration.
About 235BC Eratosthenes of Cyrene estimates the Earth's circumference with remarkable accuracy finding a value which is about 15% too big.
About 230BC Eratosthenes of Cyrene develops his sieve method for finding all prime numbers.
About 225BC Apollonius of Perga writes Conics in which he introduces the terms "parabola", "ellipse" and "hyperbola".
About 200BC Diocles writes On burning mirrors, a collection of sixteen propositions in geometry mostly proving results on conics.
About 190BC Chinese mathematicians use powers of 10 to express magnitudes.
About 150BC Hypsicles writes On the Ascension of Stars. In this work he is the first to divide the Zodiac into 360 degrees.
127BC Hipparchus discovers the precession of the equinoxes and calculates the length of the year to within 6.5 minutes of the correct value. His astronomical work uses an early form of trigonometry.
About 100BC Chinese mathematicians are the first to introduce negative numbers.
About 1AD Chinese mathematician Liu Hsin uses decimal fractions.
About 60 Heron of Alexandria writes Metrica (Measurements). It contains formulas for calculating areas and volumes.
About 100 The classical Chinese mathematics text Jiuzhang Suanshu (Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art) begins to be assembled.
About 150 Ptolemy produces many important geometrical results with applications in astronomy. His version of astronomy will be the accepted one for well over one thousand years.
250 Diophantus of Alexandria writes Arithmetica, a study of number theory problems in which only rational numbers are allowed as solutions.
About 250 The Maya civilization of Central America uses an almost place-value number system to base 20.
263 By using a regular polygon with 192 sides Liu Hui calculates the value of p as 3.14159 which is correct to five decimal places.
390 Theon of Alexandria produces a version of Euclid's Elements (with textual changes and some additions) on which almost all subsequent editions are based.
About 400 Hypatia writes commentaries on Diophantus and Apollonius. She is the first recorded female mathematician and she distinguishes herself with remarkable scholarship. She becomes head of the Neo-Platonist school at Alexandria.
About 460 Tsu Ch'ung Chi gives the approximation 355/113 to p which is correct to 6 decimal places.
499 Aryabhata I calculates p to be 3.1416. He produces his Aryabhatiya, a treatise on quadratic equations, the value of p, and other scientific problems.

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