The book presents the main features of the Wasan tradition, which is the indigenous mathematics that developed in Japan during the Edo period. (1600-1868). It begins with a description of the first mathematical textbooks published in the 17th century, then shifts to the work of the two leading mathematicians of this tradition, Seki Takakazu and Takebe Katahiro. The book provides substantial information on the historical and intellectual context, the role played by the Chinese mathematical treatises introduced at the late 16^th century, and an analysis of Seki's and Takebe's...

This is an elegant and profound homage to the discipline of descriptive geometry. Sterile classroom lectures on the subject have long been the bane of engineering and architecture students and now it is widely thought that CAD (computer-aided design) may be giving the coup de grace to this special branch of geometry. And yet modern graphics techniques are unthinkable today without the foundation that descriptive geometry provides. The author traces the discipline's evolution from the 16th through to the 19th century, starting with an examination of how it served the early art of...