Article ID: CBB001213289

Root 2: The Early Evidence and Later Conjectures (2013)

unapi

Historians believe that the discovery of the irrationality of v2, or, as it would have been described in classical Greek mathematics, the incommensurability of the side and diagonal of a square, was made in the period 550--410 bc. None of the early sources, however, includes a proof of the theorem, so historians have found it a happy hunting ground for conjectures. This article is drawn from the monographs of Knorr and Fowler, and was put together to show how much history of early mathematics is from the minds of historians.

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Authors & Contributors
Bernard, Alain
Herrmann, Dietmar
Vandendriessche, Eric
Zellini, Paolo
Rashed, Roshdi
Proust, Christine
Journals
Historia Mathematica
Archive for History of Exact Sciences
Synthese
Science in Context
Revue d'Histoire des Mathématiques
NTM: Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Technik und Medizin
Publishers
Springer Spektrum
New School University
UTET
Princeton University Press
Edwin Mellen Press
Catholic University of America
Concepts
Mathematics
Number theory; number concept
Irrational numbers
Historiography
Numbers
Pi
People
Plato
Thureau-Dangin, François
Bashmakova, Isabella Grigoryevna
Vicentino, Nicola
ibn Qurra, Thabit
Stifel, Michael
Time Periods
Ancient
Renaissance
Medieval
20th century
19th century
16th century
Places
Greece
Rome (Italy)
Mesopotamia
Middle and Near East
Egypt
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