A Short Account of the History of Mathematics

The subject-matter of this book is a historical summary of the development of mathematics, illustrated by the lives and discoveries of those to whom the progress of the science is mainly due. It may serve as an introduction to more elaborate works on the subject, but primarily it is intended to give a short and popular account of those leading facts in the history of mathematics which many who are unwilling, or have not the time, to study it systematically may yet desire to know. The first edition was substantially a transcript of some lectures which I delivered in the year 1888 with the object of giving a sketch of the history, previous to the nineteenth century, that should be intelligible to any one acquainted with the elements of mathematics. In the second edition, issued in 1893, I rearranged parts of it, and introduced a good deal of additional matter.