Robert Coolman

  • pythagoreans

    How a Mathematical Superstition Stultified Algebra for Over a Thousand Years

    Like most people, my high-school training in mathematics involved next-to-no history, barely touching on the names of a few mathematicians, like Pythagoras, and their theorems. I graduated only vaguely aware that geometry came from ancient Greece and algebra came from the Babylonians.A decade later, as a graduate researcher of chemical engineering at the University of […]