MATHEMATICAL MILESTONES

In his book, Mathematical Milestones, Professor Clement Falbo, PhD, shares many of the interesting historical anecdotes about mathematics. When Archimedes invented calculus in 250 BCE, like the first snows of winter, it didn’t stick, when it was reinvented in the 17th century, it did stick because of its necessity in burgeoning world-wide industrial activity. This time, Rene Descartes (1630), Pierre De Fermat (1635), Bonaventura Cavalieri (1635), Isaac Newton, and Gottfried Leibnitz (1660) and (1670) were given credit. In Falbo’s book we see how new inventions, discoveries and applications in science, engineering, and economics contributed to and benefited from mathematical growth. This book allows the reader to engage in the exciting axiom-and-theorem narrative that develops complex numbers, matrices, vectors, and quaternions, all in historical contexts. Professor Falbo provides us with food for thought by hypothesizing that modern mathematics was born when Abstract Algebra was invented, and Non-Euclidean Geometry was discovered in the 1800’s.