A History of Geometrical Methods

Download or read book A History of Geometrical Methods written by Julian Lowell Coolidge and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2013-02-27 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Full and authoritative, this history of the techniques for dealing with geometric questions begins with synthetic geometry and its origins in Babylonian and Egyptian mathematics; reviews the contributions of China, Japan, India, and Greece; and discusses the non-Euclidean geometries. Subsequent sections cover algebraic geometry, starting with the precursors and advancing to the great awakening with Descartes; and differential geometry, from the early work of Huygens and Newton to projective and absolute differential geometry. The author's emphasis on proofs and notations, his comparisons between older and newer methods, and his references to over 600 primary and secondary sources make this book an invaluable reference. 1940 edition.