درخت ریاضی‌دانان ایران

The story of the discovery of magnitudes that could not be expressed as fractions, and the tragic story of their discoverer

Ali Khan Nazem al-Oloom, the top graduate of the engineering class in the second cohort of Dar al-Fonun and later a teacher at the same institution, was among the companions of Naser al-Din Shah during his first trip to Europe. He remained in France, where he studied mathematics under prominent figures such as Joseph Bertrand at the École Polytechnique. After roughly two years, he returned to Iran, where he authored Hekmat-e Tabee’i, the first physics textbook written in Persian, and later Hekmat-e Riyaziyat: Osoul-e Elm-e Hesab, known as Hesab-e Ali Khan. This latter work became the most widely used mathematics textbook in Iran’s modern educational history. Despite the originality of his pedagogical approach — which emphasized mathematical meaning over rote procedure — he did not live to witness the success of his work. Shaped by the socio-political constraints of his time, his life ended in self-inflicted death. This article offers, for the first time, a detailed portrait of his life, writings, and the historical trajectory of both.

The paper uses Mohandes al-Mulk as a vantage point from which to examine one of the most important transitional moments in the history of mathematics in Iran: the passage from older traditions of rhetorical mathematics to the newer world of symbolic mathematics. Mohandes al-Mulk is important precisely because his life connects several layers of that transition. He studied at Dar al-Fonun, later taught there, wrote influential textbooks, and stood at a point where earlier Iranian mathematical traditions, Dar al-Fonun mathematics, and more modern currents could still be seen together

Mirza Nezam, a mathematician of the Qajar era educated in France, endeavored to Persianize the mathematical knowledge he acquired by devising a Farsiinspired notation system. This task was daunting, given Iran’s significant mathematical lag compared to Europe. Did he succeed? The answer may be known, but not the extent of his attempt. Now, recent discoveries of his extensive mathematical writings provide, for the first time, an opportunity to assess his efforts comprehensively. These findings enable a closer examination of his attempts and their implications within Iran’s mathematical progress. This paper not only recounts Mirza Nezam’s life but also delves into his mathematical contributions, arguing that his work represents a unique anomaly that defies comparison with the prevailing mathematical practices of his era in Iran.

The aim of this short article is to compare the methods of Khayyam and Cardano in studying and solving cubic equations, as well as to compare the paths that their methods opened up for later mathematicians

.If you have ever wondered whether it is better to say “minus five” or “negative five,” then “Signed Numbers and Signed Letters in Algebra” is well worth reading

This paper proposes a reading of the history of equivalence in mathematics. The paper has two main parts. The first part focuses on a relatively short historical period when the notion of equivalence is about to be decontextualized, but yet, has no commonly agreed-upon name. The method for this part is rather straightforward: following the clues left by the others for the ‘first’ modern use of equivalence. The second part focuses on a relatively long historical period when equivalence is experienced in context. The method for this part is to strip the ideas from their set-theoretic formulations and methodically examine the variations in the ways equivalence appears in some prominent historical texts. The paper reveals several critical differences in the conceptions of equivalence at different points in history that are at variance with the standard account of the mathematical notion of equivalence encompassing the concepts of equivalence relation and equivalence class.