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Field name	Details
Title	Thomas Harriot’s Doctrine of Triangular Numbers: the ‘Magisteria Magna’ ([EBook] /) / Janet Beery, Jacqueline Stedall
Author	Beery, Janet
Added Personal Name	Stedall, Jacqueline
Publication	Zuerich, Switzerland : : European Mathematical Society Publishing House, , 2008
Physical Details	1 online resource (144 pages)
Series	Heritage of European Mathematics (HEM) 2523-5214
ISBN	9783037195598
Summary Note	Thomas Harriot (c. 1560–1621) was a mathematician and astronomer, known not only for his work in algebra and geometry, but also for his wide-ranging interests in ballistics, navigation, and optics (he discovered the sine law of refraction now known as Snell’s law). By about 1614, Harriot had developed finite difference interpolation methods for navigational tables. In 1618 (or slightly later) he composed a treatise entitled ‘De numeris triangularibus et inde de progressionibus arithmeticis, Magisteria magna’, in which he derived symbolic interpolation formulae and showed how to use them. This treatise was never published and is here reproduced for the first time. Commentary has been added to help the reader to follow Harriot’s beautiful but almost completely nonverbal presentation. The introductory essay preceding the treatise gives an overview of the contents of the ‘Magisteria’ and describes its influence on Harriot’s contemporaries and successors over the next sixty years. Harriot’s method was not superseded until Newton, apparently independently, made a similar discovery in the 1660s. The ideas in the ‘Magisteria’ were spread primarily through personal communication and unpublished manuscripts, and so, quite apart from their intrinsic mathematical interest, their survival in England during the seventeenth century provides an important case study in the dissemination of mathematics through informal networks of friends and acquaintances.:
Mode of acces to digital resource	Mode of access: World Wide Web. System requirements: Internet Explorer 6.0 (or higher) or Firefox 2.0 (or higher). Available as searchable text in PDF format.
System details note	Online access to this digital book is restricted to subscription institutions through IP address (only for SISSA internal users).
Internet Site	https://doi.org/10.4171/059
See Also	https://www.ems-ph.org/img/books/harriot_mini.jpg
Links to Related Works	Subject References: History and biography . History of mathematics . Authors: author . Beery, Janet . Stedall, Jacqueline . Series: Heritage of European Mathematics (HEM) .

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Thomas Harriot’s Doctrine of Triangular Numbers: the ‘Magisteria Magna’

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