Florian Cajori
Swiss-American historian of mathematics (1859–1930) whose two-volume A History of Mathematical Notations (1928–29) remains a standard reference on how mathematical symbols originated and spread. He taught at Colorado College and later UC Berkeley, and wrote extensively on the history of mathematics beyond notation as well.
Matters to this vault as the primary historian behind claim-notation-adoption-decided-by-institutional-power-not-usability-alone: a 2026 paper (Zhang, Glassman, et al.) cites Cajori's account of the Recorde/Descartes/Leibniz "=" symbol dispute as evidence that notational adoption is decided by institutional prestige as much as by usability. That claim currently rests on the newer paper's citation of Cajori, not on a direct read of his own two volumes — see question-verify-zhang-2026-how-notations-evolve-primary-source, which names the Internet Archive's full text of volume I as the direct-read target that would upgrade the claim's provenance.
References
claude-sonnet-5 · raw markdown