MAT 3100: Books and Sources
Winter, 2016

1. An excellent general book (which is cheap!) and fun to read is available from Amazon.ca: "Is God a Mathematician", by Mario Livio. It was on the New York Times Best Seller List. Only $16.
   
   
2. A lot of books will be on reserve in Morisett library. Here is a partial list of good books (to be updated).
   • W. Anglin and J. Lambek The Heritage of Thales, Springer Undergrad Texts in Math, 1995. A primary source, which is very good. I use it a lot. It is a bit expensive. but available from Amazon.
     
     
   • J. Stillwell, Mathematics and Its History, Springer. (This excellent book is free via the university's contract with Springer e-books. It is also available very cheaply bound, as a printed e-book.)
     
     
   • V. Katz, A History of Mathematics, 3rd Edition. An excellent book, strongly recommended, but appears to now to be hard to get and very expensive (on Amazon). I will put two copies on reserve.
     
     
   • Howard Eves An Introduction to the History of Mathematics, Thompson, Brooks/Cole. Another excellent book, but expensive.
     
     
   
   
   
3. See the course Webpage for some reliable websites for use in this course. These will be updated constantly. These will include:
   • MacTutor (St. Andrews University) is a huge scholarly website and ultimate resource in History of Mathematics, biographies of mathematicians and philosophers, etc.
     
     
   • Certain Wikipedia sites will be given (be careful, in general, about the scholarly competence of Wikipedia articles: they can vary enormously).
     
     
   • Various scholarly websites in History of Mathematics and Philosophy, to be posted as we go along. (For example, a particularly scholarly one is Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. It is useful for such scholars as Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Pascal, etc. But be careful: it is easy to spend way too much time reading it! ).
     
     
   • We will be posting an annotated website of Euclid's elements, by Prof. David Joyce. This is a fantastic resource on Euclid's work. You will be responsible for looking through it, when we do Euclid.
     
     
   
   
   
4. My Notes. I will put a lot of Notes, both on the webpage and on Virtual Campus. I will announce that by mail. Still, I sometimes talk (and write) fast, so please take good notes.
   
   

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