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This math history trivia quiz has 60 free questions with answers, and it is about the story of mathematics rather than the sums. You will meet the Babylonian tablet that lists Pythagorean triples a thousand years before Pythagoras, the Egyptian scribe who copied the Rhind Papyrus, the Baghdad scholar whose book title became the word algebra, the Pisan merchant's son who sold Europe on the digit zero, and the two men who spent decades feuding over who invented calculus. Later rounds cover the 19th and 20th centuries: Galois writing down group theory the night before a fatal duel, Sophie Germain hiding behind a man's name, Cantor's infinities, Hilbert's 23 problems, Ramanujan's taxi-cab number, Emmy Noether's theorem, Turing at Bletchley Park, the first computer-assisted proof, and the recluse who turned down a million dollars for solving the Poincaré conjecture. The set is built for math teachers, pub quiz hosts and anyone who likes the human side of the subject. Difficulty runs from easy warm-ups to a few questions that will stretch a math major, and every answer was checked against Wikipedia or a primary source before it went in.
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Q 01Which ancient Egyptian document from around 1550 BC is one of the best-known sources of Egyptian mathematics?
The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus
It is named for Alexander Henry Rhind, a Scottish antiquarian who bought it in Luxor in 1858. Fragments bought separately by Edwin Smith ended up in the Brooklyn Museum.
Q 02Which civilisation made Plimpton 322, a c.1800 BC tablet listing Pythagorean triples?
Babylonian
It suggests Mesopotamian scribes had a systematic way of generating triples more than a thousand years before Pythagoras. Columbia University has held the tablet since George Plimpton bequeathed it in 1936.
Q 03The Ishango bone, a possible 20,000-year-old tally stick, was found in which modern country?
Democratic Republic of the Congo
It was carried to Belgium by the archaeologist who found it and sits in the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels. Some scholars think the scratches were just for grip.
Q 04Which 6th-century BC group is credited with coining the term 'mathematics'?
The Pythagoreans
They treated mathematics as a demonstrative discipline, and their leader's followers in Croton reportedly lived a secretive, ascetic communal life.
Q 05Pythagoras is said to have banned his followers from eating which food?
Fava beans
Later biographers even claimed he once persuaded a bull not to eat them. Almost nothing about his life is uncontested, including the theorem that bears his name.
Q 06Euclid, author of the Elements, spent his career in which city around 300 BC?
Alexandria
Almost everything known about him comes from Proclus and Pappus, writing centuries later. He is seen as the bridge between Plato's Athens and the later Alexandrian tradition.
Q 07Euclid's Elements is divided into how many books?
13
It has been estimated to be second only to the Bible in the number of editions printed since the first in 1482, well over a thousand.
Q 08Cicero found the tomb of Archimedes topped with which two shapes?
A sphere and a cylinder
Archimedes had shown the sphere has two-thirds the volume and surface area of the cylinder that encloses it. He was killed by a Roman soldier during the siege of his home city despite orders to spare him.
Q 09Archimedes was a native of which city, which he defended with war machines against Roman invasion?
Syracuse
Plutarch claimed he was related to the city's king, Hiero II; other writers said he was of humble birth. He also gave his father's name as Phidias, an astronomer.
Q 10Which Chinese mathematician's 263 CE commentary on The Nine Chapters proved the Pythagorean theorem and refined pi?
Liu Hui
He also worked out how to break wedge-shaped solids into pyramids and tetrahedra, making him one of the great early contributors to solid geometry.
Q 11Late in life, Hypatia advised the Roman prefect Orestes in his political feud with which bishop?
Cyril
She was murdered by a mob in March 415 AD. She was not even the first female mathematician in her city; Pandrosion came earlier in the same century.
Q 12Which Indian mathematician's 499 CE treatise records that he was 23 when he wrote it?
Aryabhata
That line puts his birth in 476 CE. His name is often misspelled with a double t by analogy with other names ending in 'bhatta'.
Q 13Which 7th-century Indian mathematician first formalised zero as a number in the Brahmasphutasiddhanta?
Brahmagupta
He composed the treatise at age 30 and is presumed to have died in Ujjain in 668. It also described four methods of multiplication.
Q 21In which ancient book's margin did Fermat scribble his 'last theorem' around 1637?
Arithmetica by Diophantus
He added that he had a proof too large to fit in the margin. Over the next two centuries it was proved only for the exponents 3, 5 and 7.
Q 22What is the mechanical calculator Blaise Pascal began building in 1642 for his tax-commissioner father called?
The Pascaline
Only eight are known to survive; four are in the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris. He also corresponded with Fermat on probability, laying the foundations of that field.
Q 23In which year was Newton's Principia Mathematica first published?
1687
Q 14The House of Wisdom, home to 9th-century Abbasid mathematicians, was in which city?
Baghdad
It was the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, and the scholar whose Latinised name became the word 'algorithm' worked there around 820.
Q 15The English word 'algebra' comes from the shortened title of a treatise by which scholar?
Al-Khwarizmi
Al-Jabr, compiled between 813 and 833, gave the first systematic solution of linear and quadratic equations, including completing the square with geometric proofs.
Q 16Fibonacci, whose 1202 Liber Abaci popularised Hindu-Arabic numerals in Europe, was from which Italian republic?
Pisa
In 1240 the city granted him a salary for advising on accounting. The rabbit-population problem in Liber Abaci gave the world the Fibonacci sequence.
Q 17Fibonacci used which Latin word for zero, a Latinisation of the Arabic 'sifr'?
Zephyrum
Sifr itself came from translating the Sanskrit sunya. Mesopotamian scribes had earlier marked an empty position with a gap, and later with hooks.
Q 18Roman numerals use seven letters. Which letter stands for 500?
D
They were only gradually replaced by Hindu-Arabic numerals from the 14th century, and they never had a symbol for zero. Clock faces still use them.
Q 19In which year did John Napier publish his Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio?
1614
He also invented the calculating rods known as Napier's bones and helped popularise the decimal point. His birthplace, Merchiston Tower, is now part of Edinburgh Napier University.
Q 20Which 1637 Descartes essay, published with the Discourse on the Method, laid the groundwork for coordinate geometry?
La Géométrie
The Cartesian coordinate system is named after him. He built on discoveries made with Pierre de Fermat and joined algebra and geometry into analytic geometry.
Newton had already been made a Cambridge professor at 26. Much of his early calculus work dates to 1665-66 when the university closed for the plague.
Q 24Who published the first paper on calculus, 'Nova Methodus pro Maximis et Minimis', in 1684?
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
He had begun developing his version in 1674. Modern historians accept that the two men created calculus independently, and Leibniz's notation is the one still used today.
Q 25Which mathematician popularised the Greek letter pi for the circle ratio and first wrote f(x)?
Leonhard Euler
Laplace told students to 'read Euler, read Euler, he is the master of us all'. He is often called the most prolific mathematician in history.
Q 26Euler founded graph theory while solving a puzzle about the seven bridges of which city?
Königsberg
The problem asked whether one could walk across all seven bridges exactly once. It is also considered the first practical application of topology.
Q 27Who first used the Greek letter pi for the ratio of circumference to diameter, in 1706?
William Jones
He was a Welsh mathematician; Euler's later adoption of the symbol made it standard. Before that, writers spelled the ratio out in words or used long fractions.
Q 28Sophie Germain corresponded with Lagrange, Legendre and Gauss under what male pseudonym?
Monsieur Le Blanc
It was the name of a former student at the École Polytechnique. She later told Gauss she feared 'the ridicule attached to a female scientist', and she won the Paris Academy's grand prize for work on elasticity.
Q 29Which regular polygon did 19-year-old Gauss prove constructible with compass and straightedge?
The 17-sided heptadecagon
Gauss was born in Brunswick in 1777 and directed the Göttingen Observatory from 1807 until his death. His Disquisitiones Arithmeticae appeared in 1801.
Q 30Which 20-year-old French mathematician, whose work founded group theory, died in 1832 from duel wounds?
Évariste Galois
He had been collecting and polishing his manuscripts in prison before his release. He was buried in a common grave in Montparnasse Cemetery whose exact location is unknown.