Books in the Sources in the History of Mathematics and Physical Sciences series

Pierre-Simon Laplace is remembered among probabilitists for his "Theorie analytique des probabilites", published in 1812. This is a translation, providing a commentary by the translator including histographical and mathematical remarks and various proofs.

The aim of this book is to make accessible the two important but rare works of Brook Taylor and to describe his role in the history of linear perspective. Taylor's works, Linear Perspective and New Principles on Linear Perspective, are among the most important sources in the history of the theory of perspective.

So many contradictory statements regarding a Descartes manuscript and Euler, by various mathematicians and historians of mathematics, were encountered that it was decided to write a separate study of the relevant part of the Descartes manuscript on polyhedra.

Like all classical Greek texts on science, Euclid's works on optics initially came to the West mainly through medieval Arabic texts and commentaries. This book presents a critical translation of an Arabic texts and of Arabic commentaries on the text, and places the whole in a historical context.

This edition of Books IV to VII of Diophantus' Arithmetica, which are extant only in a recently discovered Arabic translation, is the outgrowth of a doctoral dissertation submitted to the Brown University Department of the History of Mathematics in May 1975.