History of Greek Number Theory II 
History of Greek Number Theory II
by UNSW / N.J. Wildberger
Video Lecture 6 of 32
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Date Added: January 19, 2015

Lecture Description

The ancient Greeks studied squares, triangular numbers, primes and perfect numbers. Euclid stated the Fundamental theorem of Arithmetic: that a natural number could be factored into primes in essentially a unique way. We also discuss the Euclidean algorithm for finding a greatest common divisor, and the related theory of continued fractions. Finally we discuss Pell's equation, arising in the famous Cattle-problem of Archimedes.

Course Index

Course Description

In this course, Prof. N.J. Wildberger from UNSW provides a great overview of the history of the development of mathematics. The course roughly follows John Stillwell's book 'Mathematics and its History' (Springer, 3rd ed)Starting with the ancient Greeks, we discuss Arab, Chinese and Hindu developments, polynomial equations and algebra, analytic and projective geometry, calculus and infinite series, number theory, mechanics and curves, complex numbers and algebra, differential geometry, topology and hyperbolic geometry.  This course is meant for a broad audience, not necessarily mathematics majors. All backgrounds are welcome to take the course and enjoy learning about the origins of mathematical ideas. Generally the emphasis will be on mathematical ideas and results, but largely without proofs, with a main eye on the historical flow of ideas. At UNSW, this is MATH3560 and GENS2005. NJ Wildberger is also the developer of Rational Trigonometry: a new and better way of learning and using trigonometry.

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