The History and Mathematics in Education Network
About
What?
Mathematics and history are not completely separate disciplines: the historical development of mathematics as a subject is fascinating, involving intriguing characters, events, and places, providing context and justification for the mathematical themes that we teach students; and many of the events and personalities of humantity's broader history have mathematical themes running through, behind, or under them.These connections are not often drawn out in either history or mathematics lessons at school; and it's rare to see them explicitly mentioned in museums or even books.
It's time for that to change.
Why?
Attitudes to mathematics in most Western cultures are... not great, and tricky relationships with the subject are common. It's possible that helping people to see the importance of mathematics throughout humanity's history might help more people to build a better relationship with maths, and we've both done some research that supports this idea.Exploring the history of mathematics opens doors to much richer experiences in maths lessons; and recognising the mathematics of history provides another dimension to history teaching; a step closer to telling the full story.
How?
Maths teachers are often told that they must show where the topics they teach are relevant to other subjects and the real world... but how effective can this be if student experiences in those other subjects' lessons, and out in the real world, aren't reinforcing that message? We've set up a network that will hopefully facilitate collaborative working between maths and history teachers, and everyone else with a vested interest in learning, teaching and education for both subjects.Who?
Our research projects have primarily involved teachers at secondary schools in the UK, so this is our main audience for the History and Maths in Education Network. However, we can see that people in plenty of different roles and situations may want to join in, so if you are interested in exploring the history of maths and the maths of history, and how they can be used to enrich teaching and learning in either (or both) subjects, then welcome aboard!Us
Photograph by Troy Astarte CC BY-SA 2.0
Jason [🔗]
Jason is a PhD candidate and part-time mathematics lecturer at Middlesex University, specialising in the history of mathematics and mathematics education. A multilingual educator, he holds a BEd in Mathematics and Mathematics Education from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and an MA in Mathematics and Pedagogy from the Education University of Hong Kong. With experience across diverse educational stages, from elementary to tertiary, he is dedicated to enhancing mathematics education through historical and multicultural perspectives.
Photograph by Troy Astarte CC BY-SA 2.0
Tom [🔗]
Tom is a freelance museum learning consultant with more than a decade of experience as a qualified secondary maths teacher as well as nearly 8 years as a Learning Manager for a museum.He completed an MA in Education in 2022, with his final thesis exploring how school visits to museums might affect student attitudes towards mathematics.
His book, The Mathematicians' Library, was published in September 2025.
Get Involved
Join the Discussion List
We've setup a Jiscmail discussion list, and we're envisaging this to be our primary space for communicating about history and maths in education, and the network itself. Please visit https://jiscmail.ac.uk/HISTORY-AND-MATHS-IN-EDUCATION and click "subscribe" to become part of our community.Please note that the discussion list is public and accessible without logging in, incuding by search engines (etc), so do not post anything to it that you would not wish to be in the public domain.
Community
Exploring the history of maths and the maths of history, and embedding it in our teaching, requires working together. Here are some ideas for getting involved in this community!- Join the discussion list!
- TBC
- TBC
Resources
We hope that as the community grows, collaborative working will lead to more and different kinds of resource. We'll start to list them here.Blogs, blog posts & websites
-
The ancient Chinese manuscript that transformed mathematics
education (30/09/2024)
Jason Yip explains the significance and uniqueness of the Shu Li Ge Zhi (數理格致) manuscript by Li Shanlan (李善蘭), one of the earliest Chinese translations of Newton’s work, archived in the SOAS Special Collections. -
Mathematical Gazetteer of the British Isles
A collection of historical mathematical people and stories organised by geographical location, compiled by the late mathematician and prolific collector of mathematical books and puzzles David Singmaster. -
Tommaths: Maths in Museums (ongoing)
Tom Briggs occasionally visits museums (etc) with his maths hat on, and then blogs about it. The MathsInMuseums tag collects these on his blog.
Books
Tom has started to curate a collection of books relating to the history of maths on TheStoryGraph: click on the link below browse it (you do not need an account to do so):
List of books tagged with #history-of-mathematics at TheStoryGraph
If you do have an account with TheStoryGraph (a site for logging books and tracking your own reading habits) you might be able to add more books to the list, and I'm interested in testing this: If there's a book that you think should be on the list but isn't, find it in TheStoryGraph and add "history-of-mathematics" as a tag (with the dashes, but without the speech marks), making sure you click "update", and then refresh the list and see if it's there.
Professional organisations & societies
-
The British Society for the History of Mathematics
(BSHM)
A membership organisation that "promotes and encourages research into the history of mathematics and the dissemination of the results of that research; develops awareness of the history of mathematics for the public benefit; and supports teachers and lecturers at all levels of mathematics education to incorporate the history of mathematics into their teaching, enriching their students' experience.
Membership costs £35 per year (at the time of writing; concessionary rates available + discount for direct debit), including access to the society's journal (in print and online) and reduced admission to most BSHM events.
Research papers & project writeups
-
Integrating History into Mathematics Teaching: An Empirical
Study on Years 7 & 8 Students (2025)
A paper detailing Jason & Tom's joint research project (TBC) -
History and Pedagogy of Mathematics: A Research Trip to
Hong Kong (07/2024)
A write-up of Jason's trip to Hong Kong, funded by the BSHM Small Grant Scheme, as part of a research project comparing the effects of incorporating historical themes into mathematics lessons between England and Hong Kong. -
Maths in Museums: Investigating the potential benefits of
maths-based museum learning activities to secondary schools,
heritage sites and student attitudes towards mathematics
(T.Briggs 2022) [Unpublished MA
research thesis]
Not published or peer-reviewed (other than by his awarding university), but contact Tom if you'd like to read it and he'll happily send you a digital copy.
Events
Past Events
Future Events
Listed here are events that we feel are relevant to the History
and Mathematics in Education Network's goals. Unless
otherwise stated we are not affiliated with any of these events
other than as speakers or delegates, so please thoroughly check
the details at the linked pages and direct any questions to the
organisers.
For a broader collection of events relevant to
the history of maths, please see the BSHM's event pages:
BSHM Events
and
Non-BSHM events.
2025
11/10/25 - History of Mathematics themes in Maths Lessons: Why and How? (at MathsConf39) - London
Jason and Tom will be providing a workshop at this one-day conference in London. The conference is aimed at practising mathematics teachers, and the workshop is titled History of Mathematics themes in Maths Lessons: Why and How? Find an abstract for the workshop here, and find out more about the conference (including how to attend) here.
2026
07/03/26 - Research in Progress - Oxford
The BSHM's annual meeting at which researchers in a variety of themes within the history of mathematics present their ongoing work. At the time of writing, tickets have not yet been released.