A Brief History of Mathematics

A Brief History of Mathematics is the only published work of German doctor KARL FINK (1851-1898), translated in this edition by WOOSTER WOODRUFF BEMAN (1850-1922) and DAVID EUGENE SMITH (1860-1944). Written for both math students and professors, it is an introduction to the history of math, concerned with the evolution from number systems to symbols, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and trigonometry. In order to keep his book short and to the point, Fink omits the usual biographies of great mathematicians because while he feels such biographies give a human touch to what is normally considered a cold science, Fink wished to help students be better mathematicians, which requires understanding how the discipline was built up, not necessarily who did it.