Welcome to MAT 346.

If you are getting this email, then you are currently registered for MAT 346, Historical Development of Mathematics (or, History of Math). A tentative schedule and syllabus is posted at the course web site - http://people.uncw.edu/hermanr/mat346. There you will find links to the textbooks. I also put up simple Canvas pages which point directly to these pages or you can access them via my homepage -  http://people.uncw.edu/hermanr.

Start reading the books and thinking about the how mathematics has evolved over the last 4000 years. What areas of mathematics interest you the most and how many mathematicians can you name? Have you heard of Euler, Ramanujan, or Terrance Tao? What about famous unsolved problems like the seven Millennium Prize Problems. Well, someone solved one of these. Who discovered Taylor series? How did Newton create calculus, or was it Leibniz? What are some interesting feuds in mathematics?

Even some of the oldest mathematics was in the news last week - See https://phys.org/news/2021-08-mathematician-reveals-world-oldest-geometry.html. For other math is the news, check out
https://phys.org/science-news/mathematics/ or https://www.ams.org/mathmedia/.

The class meets two days a week at 8 AM. We begin Thursday, August 19th. I expect to see you in every class and hope you stop by my office in OS 2007J often with questions. Start the new year with every desire to get ahead and stay ahead. These are a few of the things that you can do to be successful in this class: Plan to read ahead. Do not start the homework, or study for exams, the night before! Do not be strangers and feel free to email me throughout the semester. Your first assignment is to email me and introduce yourself and/or update me on your current and future plans. What areas are you interested in learning about?

I hope you had a good summer and are ready for a wonderful semester. This looks to be another challenging semester. We are planning for face to face instruction. To keep it that way, we need to follow university guidelines and wear face coverings over your mouth and nose.
 

In the meantime, check the course pages. There are extra materials at http://people.uncw.edu/hermanr/mat346/materials.htm and links to videos at http://people.uncw.edu/hermanr/mat346/links.htm. You might want to watch some of these.

See you in about one week. I hope your semester goes well.