Babylonische wiskundigen ontwikkelen methoden om kwadratische vergelijkingen op te lossen met kleitabletten.
The Greek mathematician Diophantus of Alexandria writes a series of books on solving equations with integer and rational numbers.
The Persian scholar Al-Khwarizmi writes 'Kitab al-Jabr wa al-Muqabala', the book from which the word 'algebra' derives its name.
Leonardo of Pisa, known as Fibonacci, publishes 'Liber Abaci' and introduces the decimal number system in Western Europe.
Italian mathematicians Tartaglia and Cardano unravel the general solution for cubic equations, with the introduction of imaginary numbers as a byproduct.
René Descartes publiceert 'La Géométrie', waarin hij het cartesiaanse coördinatenstelsel introduceert en algebra koppelt aan geometrische figuren.
Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz independently develop infinitesimal calculus, which mathematically describes change and motion.
Carl Friedrich Gauss provides in his dissertation a rigorous proof that every non-constant polynomial equation has a solution among the complex numbers.
Évariste Galois, shortly before his tragic death, develops a theory that explains which equations are and are not solvable using radical expressions.
With Cantor's set theory and Gödel's incompleteness theorems, mathematics gains a new, critical foundation that exposes its own limits.
A collective of mostly French mathematicians begins rewriting the whole of mathematics from a strictly axiomatic and structuralist perspective.
Samuel Eilenberg and Saunders Mac Lane introduce categories, functors and natural transformations as a new abstract framework within mathematics.
Alexander Grothendieck develops the theory of schemes, radically expanding algebraic geometry and unifying it with algebra.
The development of computer programs such as Macsyma makes it possible to perform symbolic algebraic calculations automatically.
Andrew Wiles delivers a complete proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, using advanced techniques from modern algebraic geometry and number theory.
After centuries of attempts by countless mathematicians, Wiles combined elliptic curves, modular forms and the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture into a conclusive proof, with help from Richard Taylor for a crucial correction. This result demonstrated the power of the modern, highly abstracted algebra that had been developed since Bourbaki and Grothendieck. The image could show Wiles at a blackboard full of equations, symbolic of the culmination of a centuries-old quest.