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1800 BCE
Babylonians and Egyptians
The Babylonians and Egyptians were not systematic reasoners like the Greeks. Instead they developed a large number of calculation methods, with the intention of streamlining them, based primarily on trial-error methods. For example, they obtained multiplication tables, tables of squares and roots, tables of cubes and cube roots, exponential tables to obtain compound interest ... they even found a formula to solve quadratic equations. -
825 BCE
Abu Ja'far Mohammed ibn Musa al-Khowarizmi
Was a mathematician and astronomer whose major works introduced Hindu-Arabic numerals and the concepts of algebra into European mathematics. Latinized versions of his name and of his most famous book title live on in the terms algorithm and algebra. -
800 BCE
Roman civilization
Roman numerals originated, as the name might suggest, in ancient Rome. There are seven basic symbols: I, V, X, L, C, D and M.The numerals developed out of a need for a common method of counting, essential to communications and trade. -
Period: 600 BCE to 300 BCE
Ancient Greeks
Ancient Greeks made an enormous contribution to the systematization of reasoning. During the period from 600 BC to 300 BC, the formal principles of mathematics were developed in Greece. This period is known as the classical period, where its main representatives are Plato, Aristotle and Euclid. -
500
Hindu civilization
The decimal numbering of position we use comes from the Hindu numbering system who invented zero and called it "sunya", which means "empty". -
1202
Leonardo Fibonacci
He was an Italian mathematician, the first to write about Arabic numerals in the West. He had the opportunity to travel extensively through North Africa. There he learned Arabic numbering and positional notation with zero. Fibonacci wrote a book (1202, Liber Abaci) that served to introduce Arabic numerals into Europe, although the Romans still remained in force for three more centuries -
1545
Geronimo Cardano
The Italian mathematician was the one who demonstrated, in 1545, that debts and similar phenomena could be treated with negative numbers. Until that point, mathematicians
had believed that all numbers had to be greater than zero. -
1580
Francois Viéte
He was a mathematician who introduced the first systematic algebraic notation and contributed to the theory of equations in 1580. -
Galileo Galilei
Italian natural philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician who made fundamental contributions to the sciences of motion, astronomy, and strength of materials and to the development of the scientific method. -
John Napier
John Napier was a Scottish scholar who is best known for his invention of logarithms, but other mathematical contributions include a mnemonic for formulas used in solving spherical triangles and two formulas known as Napier's analogies. -
René Descartes
Descartes ventured into practically all the fields of knowledge of his time. He created analytical geometry, made fundamental contributions to mechanics, optics, geology, and in addition to his contributions to anthropology and medicine, he is considered the founder of psychology. -
Edmund Gunter
Edmund Gunter was an English clergyman, mathematician, geometer and astronomer of Welsh descent. He is best remembered for his mathematical contributions which include the invention of the Gunter's chain, the Gunter's quadrant, and the Gunter's scale. -
Wilhelm Schickard
Wilhelm Schickard designed and built what is considered the first digital calculator. Schickard's calculator allowed automatic additions and subtractions, and partially automated, multiplications and divisions. Unfortunately, Schickard and his entire family died during an epidemic, and his invention had no diffusion. -
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal is generally regarded as the inventor of the calculator, manufactured his wits twenty years after Schickard and was less advanced. It was based on a toothed wheel system and given the technology of the time failed to manufacture any reliable models. -
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnz was both an excellent theoretical thinker and a prominent pragmatic man. He was, along with Isaac Newton, the co-discoverer of calculus. -
Charles Babbage
He proposed two computer machines moved by steam machines "The Difference Machine" and "The Analytical Machine". -
Georges Boole
He wrote "An Investigation into the Laws of Truth", where he established for the process of reasoning a symbolic representation. -
Pehr George Scheutz
He built a highly specialiced "differential" machine.It operated using punched cards containing series of operations and data. -
John V. Atanasoff and Clifford E. Berry.
They designed the first fully electronic digital computer. "Atanasoff Berry Computer" was built in 1940 used binary arithmetic and was single-purpose. -
Howard T. Aiken
Howard T.Aiken designed and built, in 1944, an electromechanical machine named Mark 1 capable of multiplying two numbers in six seconds and dividing them by twelve. -
Von Neumann
He had carried out important studies in formal logic and was collaborating with Hilbert in his attempts to axiomatize mathematics. Von Neumann began working on the ENIAC project in August 1944, which uses decimal arithmetic. He quickly assumed responsibility for the design of the logical structure of the EDVAC which used binary notation for both storage and manipulation of numbers and instructions. -
Eckert and Mauchly
Eckert and Mauchly created the computer UNIVAC.These computers used the vacuum tube as main part, so they were extremely large, heavy equipment and generated a lot of heat. The UNIVAC processor weighed 30 tons and required the full space of a 20 by 40 feet room. -
John Backus
John Backus created FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslator) in 1954, the first high-level language computer -
Philippe Dreyfus
In 1962 Philippe Dreyfus minted the word informatique, which comes form information and automatique (computing/informática) -
J.C.R. Licklider
In 1962, J.C.R Licklider wrote an essay on the concept of the Intergalactic Network, where the whole world is interconnected and can access programs and data from
anywhere on the planet. -
Vinton Cerf
Vinton Cerf began the development of the protocol that would later be called TCP / IP, a protocol aimed at communicating some networks over others, the Internet Protocol or IP.
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