Information on the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive

The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive was created and is maintained by

John O'Connor and Edmund F Robertson

The archive contains the biographies of more than 1600 mathematicians. You can access them from a selection of Alphabetical or Chronological Biographical indexes.

We have written some articles on the development of mathematical ideas cross-referenced to the biographies. You can access these using the History Topics Index.

There is a collection of more than 60 articles on Famous Curves which have been extensively studied by mathematicians, giving their history as well as pictures of the curves and various curves (evolutes, inverses, caustics etc.) which are associated with them. If your browser is capable of handling JAVA, you have the option of experimenting with these curves in an interactive way.

There are Chronologies showing the overlapping lives of the mathematicians in our archive.

We have a Mathematicians of the day page which contains details of the mathematicians who were born or died on today's date and another file: Anniversaries for the year containing details for all dates.

You may like to try our Birthplace Maps. These are maps showing the birthplaces of those Western European or North American mathematicians in our list of biographies. One can click on them to locate a birthplace. The maps are reachable from the biography of any mathematician whose birthplace is marked.

There is a Search Form which allows you to find references to keywords throughout the archive.
You may like to try some of our Search Suggestions.

There are other good sources of information concerning the history of mathematics available on the web.

Mathematical Institute
St Andrews
Fife KY16 9SS
Scotland

joc@st-andrews.ac.uk and efr@st-andrews.ac.uk

JOC/EFR December 2004 The URL of this page is:	School_of_Mathematics_and_Statistics University_of_St_Andrews,_Scotland
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Miscellaneous/Information.html