advances of technology in our society today, we cannot be sure that the

rote skill-sets we deem of value today will be relevant to the situations and

environments students will face in their future careers. We need to teach

our students to be reflective, to be flexible, and to have the confidence to

adapt to new contexts and new situations. I hope that this text, in some

small ways, offers a sense of the creative aspect to mathematical thinking

and does indeed gently encourage the reader to think deeply about con-

cepts, even familiar ones.

Encyclopedia of Mathematics contains more than 800 entries arranged

in alphabetical order. The aim of the historical notes, culture-specific arti-

cles, and the biographical portraits included as entries, apart from provid-

ing historical context, is to bring a sense of the joy that mathematics has

brought people in the past. The back matter of this text contains a timeline

listing major accomplishments throughout the historical development of

mathematics, a list of current mathematics organizations of interest to stu-

dents and teachers, and a bibliography.

viii Introduction