c 2900 B.C. The Great Pyramid is built – the development of an early CALENDAR= Links with Religion- calendars- Priests = church mathematicians - predicting Nile floods . Early number theory and shape

c.1800 BC. The Sumerians use a BASE 60 number svstem. Babylonian papyrus called† Plimton 322 shows Pythagorean triples

c.1000 B .C. Early Vedic literature - using the "magic of numbers" includes "CASTING OUT THE NINES"

c. 550 B.C. Pythagoras of Samos leads a secret society with mystic pentagram. Pythagoras theorem in use

c. 542 B.C. Bamboo counting rods in China

c.500 B C The Mystic pentagram. - the 8 tri-grams of the Pakua see the south Korean flag- Won-Wang  -an exploration of MAGIC SQUARES in the "Lo-shiu"

c.500 B.C. Greeks emplov an ABACUS, Which is used Mesopotamia, Russia and the Ukraine (May 2009 JD)

380 B C Pythagoras of Samos solids regular/convex

c.380 B.C. Plato describes the five regular PLATONIC SOLIDS which were not extended until Kepler

300 B.C. Euclid writes the "Elements'',† the most important mathematics book of all time
Spiral shapes- growth forms -Nautilus shell

250BC Archimedes studied spirals - cylinder, sphere -later attempts to map natural shapes to curves

250 B.C. Hindus use positional notation. ZERO is used as a place holder

250 B.C. Archimedes studies spirals,the relitionship between a cylinder and the sphere, the law of the lever and finds an accurate approximation for Pi

c.230 B.C. Eratosthenes determines the size of the earth and devises a SIEVE method for finding prime numbers

100 A.D. Pi = square root of 10 used in China

410 Hvpatia of Alexandria writes commentaries on Diophantusí† ''Arithmetica" and Apollonius' "Conics". Teacher at Alexandria, killed by an angry mob

c.500 Tsu Chung Chih finds Pi approx 355/113

c. 628 Brahmagupta solves quadratic equations and uses negatives. Accepts irrational numbers

c. 710 The Venerable Bede studies the calendar and works on PUZZLES and FINGER-RECKONING

c. 775 Alcuin of York writes on MATHEMATICAL PROBLEMS

c. 820 Abu al-Khowazmi writes ''Kital al-jabr muqabala", origin of the word ALGEBRA.
The use of straight-edge and compasses in architecture- decoration of buildings- Moorish tessellation.- floor tiles

1202 Leonardo of Pisano (Fibonacci) Fibonacci Series 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21… "Fibonacci" popularises arithemetic and Hindu-Arabic numerals in ''Liber Abaci". The invention and development of printing leads to the widespread use of mathematics textbooks

1525 Albrecht Durer treats descriptive projective geometry, NETS for polyhedra

1540 Harriot introduces the > and <† symbols

1542 Robert Recorde popularises arithemetic in "The Grounde of Artes"

1543 Copernicus proposes a heliocentric theory, that the earth goes round the sun

1550 Gerard Marcatis (Mercator) learns the art of globemaking from Gemma Frisius (by projections of sphere onto a cylinder) and in map-making publishes atlases using the Mercator projection

1558 Recorde invents the EQUAL SIGN =† and uses cross-multiplication in "The Whetstone of Witte''

1585 Simon Stevin of Bruges advocates DECIMAL FRACTIONS for general purposes in "De Thiende"

1606 Galileo Galilei places the square numbers in 1:1 correspondencc with the† integers. First treatment of dynamics

1609 Kepler discovers the elliptical orbits of the planets- discovers two stellated polylhedra. Shapes from algebraic functions. Special curves (see below)1614 Napier invents logarithms

1637 Pierre Fermat describes a famous "Last Theorem"

1637 Descartes writes his book ''La GÈometrie", the first use of two numbers† x,y to determine a point

1642 Blaise Pascal constructs a mechanical CALCULATOR which can add and subtract in theory, but is poor in practice

1654 Pascal and Fermat begin a correspondence on theory of PROBABILITY

1664 Isaac Newton discovers the general binomial theorem. At 23 years of age the foundations of CALCULUS

1675 Gottfried Liebniz independently also develops the calculus: constructs a calculator. Explores NUMBER SYSTEMS in other bases

1735 Leonhard Euler studies the seven bridges of Konigsberg problem. Connectivity and the formula V + F= E + 2

1742 Christian Goldbach conjectures that every even integer > 2 is the sum of two primes

1750 Maria Agnesi studies functions - "witch of Agnesi"

1777 Comte de Buffon gives a STATISTICAL METHOD of dropping sticks onto lined paper for estimating Pi

1790 Lagrange proposes adoption of THE METRIC SYSTEM in France. "Every number is the sum of four squares"

1805 Sophie Germain - number theory and analysis

1807 Carl Gauss "Every positive integer can be expressed as the sum of three triangular numbers

1810 Louis POINSOT "STAR polygons"

1810 Mary Somerville "A Mechanism of the Heavens"

1810 Star polygons- Louis Poinsot. Discovery of more non-Platonic polyhedra

1815 Augustin Cauchy theory of complex analysis

1828 Lobachevsky and Bolyai

1832 discover a non-Euclidean geometry where angles of a triangle < 180'

1832 Evariste Galois group theory- dies in a duel aged onlv 21

1832 Charles Babbage develops a "difference" engine and an "analytic engine"

1835 Lambert Quetelet develops idea of an "average man

1840 Arthur Caylcy develops theory of Matrices

1842 Ada Augusta Lovelace expands Charles Babbage 's idea of ''finite differences"

1846 George Boole writcs a pamphlet on "The Laws of Thought" - the basis of BOOLEAN ALGEBRA

1850 Georg Cantor develops theory of Sets

1854 Bernhard Reimann geometry on a surface where angles of a triangle total greater than 180'

1858 Moebius studies topology of the Mobius strip (as did J.B. Listing, two months earlier)

1865 Lewis CARROLL writes "Alice in Wonderland" (Charles Lutwige Dodgson) - devises logic diagrams

1874 Sonia Kovalevsky - works on differential equations and becomes maths professor at Stockholm

1881 John Venn - diagrams for symbolic logic

1882 Felix Klein - the "Klein bottle"

1898 Escher architect - use of maths grids to generate art

1906 Von Koch studies curves which generate “snowflake" and ''anti-snowflake'' curves

1910 Grace Chisholm Young, friend of Cantor, set theorv

1914 -19 Hardy, Littlewood and Ramanujan study number and function theorv

1921 Amalie Noether -Group structure "theory of rings" and non-commutative algebra

1944 John Von Neumann and Oscar Morgenstern publish a "Theory of Games"

1947 Piet Hein invents the "Soma cube".

1972 René Thom publishes ''Catastrophe Theory"

1982 Benoit Mandelbrot publishes the geometry of FRACTALS. Fractals- ‘phyllotaxis’ or the turning angles of plants - the ‘natural angle’ and 'phi'

1990s Computer vector graphics 3D visualization (Spirograph applets)

1992 Largest known perfect number, which is the sum of its factors, is discovered using a Cray 2 computer (2 power 756,839 - 1) x† (2 power 756,838)

N.B. THIS SECTION NEEDS EDITING - (CONTACT EDITOR JOHN DODRIDGE TO EXPAND- July 2009)