Interdisciplinary Connections with Classics: 
Lessons from the History of Mathematics

Liane Houghtalin and Suzanne Sumner

University of Mary Washington

The presenters, one a mathematician and the other a classicist, were able to take an opportunity provided by the Teaching Innovation Program at their institution to attend, as serious students, each other’s classes—The History of Mathematics and Elementary Latin.  With a continued interest in the intersection of their two disciplines, they have sought ways to build on those interdisciplinary connections.

While the importance of ancient Greece to the history and development of mathematics is common knowledge—think of Thales of Miletus, Pythagoras, and Euclid—and while most classicists are well aware that mathematical treatises were published in the scholarly language of Latin well into the Renaissance and beyond, it is rare to see the history of mathematics incorporated either into courses in classical civilization or into Latin classes.  The purpose of this presentation is to offer examples from the history of mathematics that could be logically inserted into such courses, as well as a list of resources for continued exploration into the history of mathematics as it relates to the ancient world and to classical languages. 

The story of Plato and the Delian Problem, that of the problem Archimedes sent to Eratosthenes concerning the cattle of Helios, and their solutions would certainly lead the student not only to a greater appreciation of history, legend, and the classical world, but also to a greater appreciation of mathematics.  In addition, mathematics in the Latin class need not be limited to learning Roman numerals:  reading samples from works in Latin such as Cardan’s Ars Magna (published in 1545) on the subject of algebra should delight students with how much and how swiftly they can read the Latin explanations of topics already familiar to them.  Finally, Newton and Galileo, as well as other famous mathematicians and scientists, produced Latin anagrams containing the conclusions of their research in order to establish a claim until such time as they could publish the whole.  These anagrams offer the Latin student not only some interesting word puzzles and yet another peek into mathematics, but also the potential of an entertaining way to practice and demonstrate Latin composition.