Old Babylonian period · second millennium BCE
Babylonian Mathematics
Read a base-sixty number, decode a square’s diagonal, and ask what a surviving calculation can tell us.
History of mathematics
Journey Through Mathematics
Numbers are written. Arguments are made. Ideas travel.
Explore the objects and practices through which people have made mathematics. Read the evidence, try a reconstruction, and follow an idea into another part of the Atlas.
Begin with an object
A square written in clay
Decode the places of a Babylonian number. Then investigate a ratio recorded on YBC 7289.
Open Babylonian MathematicsFive mathematical traditions
Explore →
Hellenistic Alexandria · around 300 BCE
Euclid and Proof
Follow a compass-and-straightedge construction, then connect every drawn object to the equalities used in its proof.
compiled over time · conventionally placed around the Han period
The Nine Chapters
Reduce the first grain problem from the Fangcheng chapter while keeping historical columns distinct from modern matrix rows.
South Asian manuscript and astronomical traditions · first millennium CE
Zero and Place Value
Compare 205, 25 and 250 to separate positional work from modern arithmetic with zero.
Baghdad · early ninth century CE
Algebra in Baghdad
Rebuild x² + 10x = 39 as an area, complete its missing corner and compare the positive geometric answer with both modern roots.
Learn with Math Society
One classroom, one shared investigation
Session 01 follows a 38-minute core path through Babylonian numbers, reciprocal tables and a square’s diagonal.
Open Session 01 →Beyond this release
The story continues
Renaissance · Calculus · Modern Mathematics
These periods are a future research direction. The current historical exhibitions end in the medieval Islamic world.