Afterword

Summary

Although there is much current research on medieval Indian mathematics, there are few books or articles accessible to the non-specialist. The classic history of Indian mathematics is B. Datta and A. N. Singh's History of Hindu Mathematics [2], but this book, written in the 1930s, does not at all reflect modern research, such as the material on power series in the three articles on India in this section. A more recent book, which has two chapters devoted to ancient and medieval Indian mathematics, is Crest of the Peacock [6], by George Gheverghese Joseph. We understand, however, that there are other works on Indian mathematics, now in the planning stage, which will be both comprehensive and accessible.

Since there are still massive quantities of Islamic mathematical documents still unread in libraries around the world, it is not yet possible to produce a comprehensive history of Islamic mathematics. However, two recent books provide glimpses into various aspects of this history. The first is Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam [1], by Len Berggren, which is designed to be comprehensible to secondary students. The second, on a somewhat higher level, is Roshdi Rashed's The Development of Arabic Mathematics: Between Arithmetic and Algebra[9]. This book is an organized translation of a number of articles by Rashed, originally written in French, which provide insights into the development of arithmetic and algebra in the Islamic tradition.