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 points 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?

What do you know about AI? While the term was introduced for the 1956 Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, where it redefined the boundaries of mathematical logic, computation, and automation. Many of these ideas go back to the 1600s with the invention of logarithms, mechanical calculating devices and Leibniz's Dream. It is interesting to trace mathematical developments to their roots in order to understand that mathematics is an evolving field.

Have your read about the recent Fields Medalists? Hong Wang, Jacob Tsimerman, John Pardon and Yu Deng. See https://www.quantamagazine.org/tag/fields-medal/.

Even some of the oldest mathematics shows up in the news. - See The identification and work of an eighth-century Maya mathematician and  https://phys.org/news/2025-05-mathematician-algebra-oldest-problem-intriguing.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 20th. 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?

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.

I hope you had a good summer and are ready for a wonderful semester. See you in about one week. I hope your semester goes well.