Mathematical Treasure: Mandey’s Synopsis of Mathematics

Venterus Mandey (1645–1701) was a teacher of mathematics and surveying in London. His comprehensive Synopsis Mathematica Universalis (1702) was based mainly on his translations of the works of the German mathematician and professor Johann Jacob Heinlin (1588–1660), who was a student of Kepler. (See images from Heinlin’s original here.) The title page and frontispiece below are from an edition published in 1729.

The image above was obtained through the courtesy of the Erwin Tomash Library on the History of Computing, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota.

Erwin Tomash (1921–2012) was a pioneering computer scientist, helping launch the U.S. computer industry from the 1940s onward. During the 1970s he became interested in the history of computer science, and founded the Charles Babbage Society, and its research arm, the Charles Babbage Institute. The Institute, an archive and research center, is housed at the University of Minnesota. Its Erwin Tomash Library on the History of Computing began with Tomash's 2009 donation to the Institute of much of his own collection of rare books from the history of mathematics and computing. (Source: Jeffrey R. Yost, Computer Industry Pioneer: Erwin Tomash (1921–2012), IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, April–June 2013, 4–7.)

Index to Mathematical Treasures