Dear friends, maths is a subject which all of us have to study at one time or another. The subject is not just a collection of formulas, equations, fractions or theorem, it is a guide to living life well. No matter what you want to do in life, you will find it everywhere.

Whether you are buying shoes, clothes or something more expensive like a laptop, you use maths. You need to know the price, calculate money you have or even compare prices.

Without maths, there would be no banking, no fashion, no music, no art, and no architecture and so on. It is all around us. In nature, the arrangement of petals, distribution of leaves, patterns of flowers, internal and external structure of stem and branches are based on maths.

We all love to play musical instruments like guitar, drums and piano. All these instruments work based on calculations. And if you want to be a fashion designer in future, you must have a good understanding of maths.

A brief story of maths

Here is the brief history of the maths to help you develop better understanding of the subject.

• Long ago, ancient Egyptians did calculations and used geometry to make figures and buildings. They were masters of addition, multiplication, division and fractions. The famous pyramids were built some 4,000 years ago and these are remarkable example of maths calculations. They drew geometrical figures to decorate their caves, homes and graveyards, again by taking the help of maths.

• The Babylonian civilisation (present-day Iraq) developed trigonometry some 3,700 years ago. They used squares, cubes, square roots, cube roots for making buildings, temples, palaces, canals, and selling things. Their method is still used to tell time.

• Greek maths experts put forward many important maths theories some 2000 years ago. They discovered properties of numbers, developed theorems, many geometric areas and trigonometry.

• Indian mathematicians were masters of calculation and use of zero. Later the Arabs invented the Arabic numeral system. The complete system of numerical digits 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 that we use today developed in ninth century.

• During 13 century, Europe shared its maths knowledge with the world. They widely applied maths in trade and commercial purposes.

• The symbols used for addition (+) and subtraction (-) have been around for thousands of years. Most of the mathematical symbols were invented during the 16th century.

• The equals sign (=) was invented in 1557 by a Welsh mathematician named Robert Recorde.

• During the 15th and 16th centuries, European travellers and traders used arithmetic calculations to navigate sea routes.

Great mathematical minds

• Euclid: The ‘father of geometry’ was an ancient Greek mathematician during the third century BCE. He wrote 13 volumes of a book “Elements”, which was used as a textbook for the students of geometry. The book was a collection of his work in geometry and important maths formulas of other mathematicians.

• Archimedes: He was a Greek who worked day and night to solve problems of geometry, arithmetic and mechanics. He studied in the school established by Eulid. He worked to determine the value of pi. In addition, he created a new way to show very large number. He invented the field of statics.

• Muhammad Al- Khwarizmi: The great mathematician of the ninth century is also known as the father of algebra. He is best known for developing the concept of the algorithm in mathematics. The books written by Al-Khwarizmi on algebra were taught to the students of European universities until the 16th century. He introduced the fundamental algebraic methods of “reduction” and “balancing”, and provided a complete account of solving “polynomial equations” up to the second degree.

• Carl Friedrich Gauss: The prince of mathematicians belonged to a poor German family. He showed his maths skill the first time at the age of three when he corrected an error in his father payroll calculations. When he reached the age of seven, he astonished his teacher by summing the integers from 1 to 100 quickly.

At the age of 15 the duke of Brunswick sent him to the Collegium Carolinum and then to the University of Göttingen. At just 19 years of age, he made a major discovery in the field of geometry. He constructed seventeen-sided figure (polygon) using only a ruler and compass. He was the pioneer of prime number theory.

• Pythagoras: The great mind believed that the universe is composed in the language of mathematics. He made remarkable contributions to the mathematical theory of music. He studied properties of numbers, such as even and odd numbers, triangular numbers, perfect numbers, etc.

• Maryam Mirzakhani: Iranian female mathematician was the only woman ever to win a Fields Medal, the most prestigious honour in mathematics. She died in July 2017.

Published in Dawn, Young World, October 21st, 2017