History of Mathematics

Amy Dahan-Dalmedico is director of research at CNRS and assistant director of the Center Alexandre Koyré. Her research has focused on mathematics in the second half of the twentieth century and climate change. Jeanne Peiffer is a researcher at CNRS and editor-in-chief of the Journal of the History of Mathematics. Her research interests focus mainly on geometry and the connections with Renaissance art; in particular Albrecht Dürer. She has also written extensively about women in mathematics. Sanford Segal is the author of 44 journal articles in mathematics, the history of mathematics, or mathematical education and the author of two books. His main interest in recent years has been the history of mathematics. He was a professor of the mathematics department at the University of Rochester from 1977 to 2008.

Translator's preface; 1. Landscapes; 2. A moment of rationality: Greece; 3. The constitution of classical algebra; 4. Figures, spaces, and geometries; 5. Limits: from the unconceived to the concept; 6. The concept of function and the development of analysis; 7. At the crossroads of algebra, analysis, and geometry: complex numbers; 8. New objects, new laws: the emergence of algebraic structures.