As I told my class on Thursday, the theme of the first week of our math history course was “easy algebra is hard in base 60.” We started the semester in ancient Mesopotamia, trying to understand ...

The Babylonian civilization was at its peak roughly 4,000 years ago, with architecturally advanced cities throughout the region known today as Iraq. Babylonians were especially brilliant with math, ...

The humble decimal point may have been invented about 150 years before we previously thought. Experts had previously credited German mathematician Christopher Clavius for the innovation, but according ...