David Eugene Smith

"The law which asserts that the equation X = 0, complete or incomplete, can have no more real positive roots than it has changes of sign, and no more real negative roots than it has permanences of sign…"

"The excellent work of Tropfke is an example of the tendency to break away from the mere chronological recital of facts."

"With the coming of the Jesuits in the 16th century, and the consequent introduction of Western science, China lost interest in her native algebra..."

"He used capital vowels for the unknown quantities and capital consonants for the known, thus being able to express several unknowns and several knowns."

"His writings include works on mechanics, sound, astronomy, the tides, the laws of motion, the Torricellian tube, botany, physiology, music, the calendar , geology, and the compass,—a range too wide to…"

"It is difficult to say who it is who first recognized the advantage of always equating to zero in the study of the general equation. It may very likely have been Napier, for he wrote his De Arte Logis…"

"The field of mathematics is now so extensive that no one can longer pretend to cover it, least of all the specialist in any one department. Furthermore it takes a century or more to weigh men and thei…"

"The problem of the biquadratic equation was laid prominently before Italian mathematicians by Zuanne de Tonini da Coi, who in 1540 proposed the problem, "Divide 10 parts into three parts such that the…"