Abstract

The volume D'al-Khwārizmī à Descartes is a monumental contribution to the world history of mathematical sciences, showing clearly that Arabic mathematics was an indispensable predecessor of early modern European mathematics. Roshdi Rashed is known, first of all, as an editor of classical mathematical writings in Arabic by such authors as al-Khwārizmī, Thābit ibn Qurra, Ibrāhīm ibn Sinān, Ibn al-Haytham, al-Khayyām, Sharaf al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, as well as of the Arabic versions of Apollonius' Conics , Diophantus' Arithmetica , and Diocles' Burning Mirrors . As the volume under review shows, he is also a historian of mathematics of the first class who has transformed historiography. This book is, in a sense, a manifesto of Prof. Rashed's entire œuvre