Mathematics

Featured exhibit items for mathematics.

Exhibit Items

	Elements of Geometry, 1570 Euclid, (1570) Euclid was the starting point for any further study of optics and perspective. Optics combined geometry, experiment, vision and art. In the presentation of the geometrical solids, this copy retains the original pop-ups.
	The Divine Proportion Pacioli, Luca (1509) Consider this geometrical drawing, portrayed with true perspective and a mastery of light and shadow. It comes from a treatise on art and mathematics by Luca Pacioli, yet it was not drawn by Pacioli.
1	Elements of Geometry, 1482 Euclid, (1482) Euclid was the starting point for a mathematical approach to physics. This is the 1st printed edition. The beautiful woodcuts are hand-colored in this copy. The text of the first page was printed in both black and red ink. The geometrical diagrams were quite difficult to prepare.
1	The Marriage of Philology and Mercury Capella, Martianus (1499) Capella described the seven liberal arts. The first three are grammar, logic or dialectic, and rhetoric. Then come the mathematical sciences, geometry and arithmetic. Geometrical circles in motion make astronomy. Numbers in motion make music.
3	Chronicle of Mathematics Baldi, Bernardino Bernardino Baldi was an Italian mathematician whose work gives insight into the milieu of Galileo. This is one of two autograph manuscripts by Baldi held by the Collections.
4	A Description of the Marvelous Rule of Logarithms Napier, John (1614) In this book, Napier presented logarithmic methods of calculation in more than 50 pages of explanation, followed by 90 pages of numerical tables. “Logarithm” derives from “logos” (proportion) and “arithmos” (number).
4	On Secret Writing Porta, Giambattista della (1563) Members of the Academy of the Lynx preferred to communicate with each other in code. Della Porta was the most accomplished cryptographer of the Renaissance. This work includes a set of movable cipher disks to code and decode messages.
7	Works, Archimedes Archimedes, (1543) Archimedes (d. 212 B.C.) developed the law of the lever with his Treatise on the Balance. He contributed to arithmetic by devising methods for expressing extremely large numbers. He deduced many new geometrical theorems on spheres, cylinders, circles and spirals.
8	On Conic Sections Apollonius, (1710) Apollonius (3rd century B.C.E.) examined the properties of conic sections; namely, the: • circle (cuts a cone horizontally, perpendicularly to the axis of the cone) • ellipse (cuts a cone to make a closed curve) • parabola (cuts a cone parallel to a side of the cone) • hyperbola (cuts a cone in...
10	The Elements of Euclid , (1847) Color-coded, graphical proofs occur in this masterpiece of visual presentation and design. Text is dramatically reduced in favor of a strategy of visual thinking.