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Can you suggest a topic (the history of mathematics) concerning the evolution of a given concept from a document written in English from varied scientific resources

What do you think of the history of notations +, -, x, /, letters for variables, indices, exhibitors, and the time it took to will accept, for example, see the negative as numbers.

It often surprises people to see that this is very recent and we were able to make very complicated math without these symbols (and no negative ...)

is there any reference in english about that (only the newest document ) if possible

any help will be appreciated !

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    Consider asking at History of Science and Math S.E. too. – Git Gud Nov 17 '14 at 15:33
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    The story of how a geneal solution to the cubic came about.. Listing all mathematicians in the 1500s that contributed..ie Tartaglia and Cardano to name but a few – Sean Nov 17 '14 at 15:54
  • Possible duplicate: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/31058/good-books-on-math-history – A Bajaj Nov 17 '14 at 17:55
  • I'd suggest to read Carl B. Boyer's "History of mathemathics" and you would find many ideas, included the evolution of notations, as you asked. Another interesting topic could be the evolution of the methods for trying to solve the three classical problems (trisect the angle, double the cube and sqaure the circle). [I've just noticed it's a really old question] – xyzt Apr 12 '17 at 15:02

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Generally, the accepted reference for all topics regarding the development of notations is Florian Cajori's History of Mathematical Notations. Cajori was a renowned historian, and other books of interest are A History of Mathematics, and A History of Elementary Mathematics. Due to the calculus tag, I am also adding A History of the Conceptions of Limits and Fluxions in Great Britain, from Newton to Woodhouse, by the same author; for a history of probability theory, I can suggest Games, Gods and Gambling by FN David, which is about the evolution of a few concepts over time (see also The History of Statistics by Stephen Sigler).

Though Swedish by birth, Cajori spent much of his life in the USA; hence, all of these books are in English, also, many are in public domain, and freely available on the Internet Archive.

A more recent book on the development of notations is Enlightening Symbols by Joseph Mazur.

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